Psychology of the religious life

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EDITED BY J. H. MUIRHEAD, LL.D.

PSYCHOLOGY OF THE
RELIGIOUS LIFE

BY THE SAME AUTHOR

EXPERIMENTAL PSYCHOLOGY AND ITS
BEARING UPON CULTURE

NEW YORK AND LONDON, 1903

S9llp

PSYCHOLOGY OF THE
RELIGIOUS LIFE

BY

GEORGE MALCOLM STRATTON

SOMETIME PROFESSOR OF EXPERIMENTAL PSYCHOLOGY IN THE JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY
PROFESSOR OF PSYCHOLOGY IN THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA

>1

LONDON
GEORGE ALLEN & COMPANY, LTD.

RUSKIN HOUSE
44 & 45, RATHBONE PLACE

igii

PREFACE

T N the present study an attempt is made to describe

•*• some of the more significant features of religion, and

to discover the causes that give them their peculiar character.

Perhaps a word may be said as to the method used.
There are objections, I feel, to basing a psychological
account of religion mainly upon answers received from
individuals when directly questioned in regard to their
religious experience, even when these answers are supple-
mented by material gathered from life-histories, especially
from autobiographies of the religious. It is true that a
method which has been followed with signal effect by
James, Starbuck, Coe, Pratt, and others is certainly justified.
And yet the persons most easily reached by such means
are, for the most part, adherents of one and the same
religion, they are of the Occident, and naturally show a
preponderance of that special type of character that is
ready to grant to a stranger an access to the secret places of
personality.

To escape some of these difficulties one ought to observe
from the standpoint of psychology the religious life of a
wide variety of peoples, even those most reticent, and when
they are off their guard and without self-consciousness.
The prayer, the hymn, the myth, the sacred prophecy —

vi Preface

these, I must believe, still furnish to the psychologist
the best means of examining the full nature of religion in
its diverse forms. In the outline so obtained the details
gained from other sources will then find their proper place.
I have accordingly gone first to a number of the great
canonical collections, to the epic and to reliable accounts
of custom and observance, and only in the second place to
the introspective reports of individuals. One thus attains
his scientific view of religion mainly from its manner of
expression in some vital society, and there is far less danger
of laying undue stress on what is exceptional and even
morbid. Little need be said of the doubt lest, as psycholo-
gical evidence, some of the canonical collections should have
in them a trace of insincerity. For were we to assume that
the Koran, for example, had mingled in it some conscious
imposition, this need not destroy its value as evidence of
what would fire the Arabic mind, what would give form
and direction to the ideal striving of that people. What-
ever motives may have entered into such a work, the pro-
duct must have been psychologically sound ; for men re-
sponded to it, accepted it, and made it the basis of a creed,
and this is proof positive that it answered to something
deep in the nature of those to whom it was addressed.

A word of caution may be given with regard to my use
of certain terms. The scripture of any people represents a
great historical development, wherein are vestiges of an
earlier religious life and of subsequent reforms. For con-
venience I have often named the whole development by
some dominant personal name, calling all that is in the
Koran, for instance, ' Mohammedanism,' even though much

Preface vii

of it is known to antedate Mohammed, and much of Moham-
medanism comes later than the Koran ; and similarly the
various phases of religion pictured in the Chinese Canon
have been designated ' Confucianism/ just as ' Zarathus-
trism ' is roughly used for the variety of life presented in
the Zend-Avesta.

In quoting from the Sacred Books of the East some liberty
has been taken with extra-textual words. The translator's
brackets, employed to distinguish additional or explana-
tory words from those whose equivalents are in the text
itself, have here been regularly omitted, and in one or
two instances the bracketed words themselves, where they
seemed unnecessary. Readers of the present volume would
doubtless prefer not to have the eye persistently jogged by
these scholarly reminders, especially since the references
will permit a ready recovery of the lost niceties by those
who may desire them. In these references the translator's
name is usually given in the first citation only ; the numerals
in round brackets refer to volume and page in the edition of
the Sacred Books oj the East. In the case of Homer, while
in general the version is that of the translators cited, yet
in a few instances I have ventured to modify slightly a
phrase of theirs to bring out a little more clearly, as I felt,
some distinction in the Greek.

The well-known works of Tylor and of Frazer have
naturally been my most important guide to the study of
the less civilized peoples. The footnote references to their
volumes are hardly a sufficient indication, however, of my
debt, ; for wherever it has been possible to consult the
sources they note, I have usually cited only the earlier

viii Preface

authority. Professor James's volume on Religious Experi-
ence has inevitably been of influence throughout, even
though his writing arouse so often one's admiring opposi-
tion. It would carry me to unseemly length to enumerate
all the persons to whom I am indebted. I cannot, how-
ever, refrain from mentioning in particular the patience
and courtesy of the librarians and their assistants at
the University of California, the Johns Hopkins Univer-
sity, and the Peabody Institute. The unfailing kindness of
Professor David M. Robinson, in response to my trouble-
some enquiries regarding Greek sources, I shall not easily
forget. And, if he will permit me to say it, I am under
deep obligation to the Editor of the present Library, Pro-
fessor Muirhead, for the many substantial improvements he
has suggested. To the best of teachers, Professor Howison,
and to Joseph Worcester, my gratitude for very real assist-
ance is tinged with something close to filial piety.

As for the actual outcome of the work ; if one were
gifted to set forth what can be observed in such a field,
there would certainly be given a vivid and definite impres-
sion of the war of motives in religion. At every instant the
mind is driven powerfully in opposite directions : it at
once clings to and abhors the self and the world, both
physical and social ; it wishes to act in conflicting ways,
and at the same time to remain passive ; it depends upon
and despises its own powers of sense and of intellect ; it
would have its divinity both many and one, both near and
far, both known and unknown. This inner tension which
the facts themselves bring to view — a tension that often
goes to the very breaking-point, so that some single clear

Preface ix

motive now completely rules — I have tried to make evident
and explain, and to illustrate by like conflicts that are not
religious. It is of course but an essay toward a complete
account of these things, and I hardly believe that others
can feel more keenly than I myself its imperfections.

Finally, I must confess to a certain misgiving at the
thought of putting scalpel into anything so quick and sensi-
tive as that with which we are here concerned. Such mis-
trust ought perhaps to be decisive were not understanding
itself a part of reverence, and were it not true that a cold
scrutiny of the mind, even when worshipping, is needed to
decide what is better and what worse. The saner types
of religion will hardly suffer by close inspection nor by
placing them in contrast with the more erratic forms.

G. M. S.

BERKELEY, CALIFORNIA,
September, 1911

CONTENTS

PAGE

INTRODUCTION : EXPRESSIONS OF THE SENSE OF CONFLICT . i

PART I

CONFLICTS IN REGARD TO FEELING AND EMOTION

CHAPTER

I. APPRECIATION AND CONTEMPT OF SELF . 23

II. BREADTH AND NARROWNESS OF SYMPATHY . . 39

III. THE WORLD ACCEPTED OR RENOUNCED . . 63

IV. THE INCENTIVES TO RENUNCIATION . -75
V. THE OPPOSITION OF GLOOM AND CHEER . . 89

VI. THE SUPPRESSION AND INTENSIFYING OF EMOTION . 105
VII. THE WIDER CONNECTIONS OF FEELING . 117

PART II

CONFLICTS IN REGARD TO ACTION

VIII. CEREMONIAL AND ITS INNER SUPPORTS . . 133

IX. COOLNESS TOWARD RITES . . . . 147

X. SOME RIVAL INFLUENCES UPON ACTION . .154

XI. ACTIVITY AND REVERENT INACTION . . .164

XII. THE INNER SOURCES OF PASSIVITY . . 174

xii Contents

PART III

CONFLICTS IN REGARD TO RELIGIOUS THOUGHT

CHAPTER PAGE

XIII. SOME STAGES OF RELIGIOUS THOUGHT . .191

XIV. CAUSES OF THE TRUST AND JEALOUSY OF INTELLECT 204
XV. THE PLACE OF BELIEF . . . -213

XVI. IMAGES OF THE DIVINE . . . .220

XVII. THE OPPOSITION OF PICTURE AND THOUGHT . 230

XVIII. THE ESCAPE FROM IMAGERY . . . 243

XIX. MANY GODS AND ONE GOD : THE MOTIVES FOR

INCREASE. . . . . 257

XX. THE MOTIVES FOR DECREASE AND UNITY . 273

XXI. THE KNOWN AND THE UNKNOWN GOD . . 288

XXII. DIVINITY AT HAND, AND AFAR OFF . . 300

PART IV

CENTRAL FORCES OF RELIGION

XXIII. THE IDEALIZING ACT .... 325

XXIV. CHANGE AND PERMANENCE IN THE IDEAL . 339
XXV. STANDARDS OF RELIGION . . . -353

INDEX . . . . . . .369

PSYCHOLOGY OF THE
RELIGIOUS LIFE

INTRODUCTION

EXPRESSIONS OF THE SENSE OF CONFLICT

/T^VHE labour and duty of understanding religion fall
J. partly to psychology ; and a psychological study
shares in the general freedom and restriction of all scientific
work. One is here aloof, for the time, from many human
interests. For at the moment when he is trying to observe
and understand the human mind in its reverence — observe
it with that singleness of aim which those have who study
the action of light upon plants, or the behaviour of bees in
storing honey — the student must shut out so much of him-
self as is of one blood with the reformer and the philosopher,
with the iconoclast and the priest. Yet in his coolness to-
ward their peculiar ends, he has his own zeal and earnest-
ness. He is impelled by a freer intellectual curiosity, and
can trace without distraction the natural laws of our re-
sponse to what supremely impresses us. Such a student is
eager solely to follow the intricate turns of cause and effect,
having this one unalterable bias, that in human thought
and action, even when in the presence of what is held most
sacred, natural causes are everywhere at work, and with
perseverance can be disclosed.

2 Psychology of the Religious Life

The aim of a psychological study of religion is to explain,
after the manner of science ; but not to explain away nor
to support. Its office is not that of the judge, to condemn
or approve religion as a whole, or any special features of
religion ; such judgment should be by other laws than
science furnishes, laws that must be sought in their own
way and place. But it is easier to see the uses of such
temperance than to practise it. And the present study will
at times, I doubt not, pass from the level of pure causal
interest to that of the critic and director. Any such de-
partures must be acknowledged as lapses due to infirmity
of the flesh, for which the reader will, I hope, have charity.
Yet at the close I shall beg a privilege, which most writers
have enjoyed, of overstepping bounds and freely pointing
out some of the wider bearings of whatever may have been
observed.

In the main, this will be the strict work in hand :
to group broadly the features of religion and to connect
them with the acts of mind that give them form. A con-
venient and widely accepted division of mental powers
into those of feeling and emotion, of will and outer conduct,
and of knowledge, may well serve to give order to this in-
finitely varied material. We shall then see, if possible,
how the emotions of common life, and the common ways
of conduct and of thinking, extend into religion and show
their influence there. Contrasts within the single mind
and in the different temperaments of persons and of races
will at once appear, and force one to ask whether contrasts
of religious life and ideas may not in the end be due to
these. In this way it may be possible to discern some of
the intricate mental forces that produce variations of belief
with regard to human destiny and the divine character and
its relation to men and the world. The endless difficulties
of such an undertaking, and yet its inherent interest and
promise, put one between despair and hope of a happy
outcome.

But since our attention will be so long upon the various

Expressions of the Sense of Conflict 3

forms of the conflict within the religious mood, it may be
well to give first of all, and as a kind of preparation for a
more minute survey, the projections of this inner conflict
outward upon Nature and the world of spirits. It will serve
as a kind of index of the struggle within, which man himself
often fails to recognize, seeing only its distant reflection
and believing this to be all.

In the religious life there is an inherent struggle. The
presence of the Supremely Impressive makes the self and
other men and all the common goods of life objects at once
of value and contempt. Reverence calls forth both hope
and fear, both rejoicing and dejection.

And yet men naturally see this conflict, not as wholly in
themselves, but at least in part as without : the parts and
powers of the world appear to be in mutual strife. There is,
however, in peoples and religions a differing sense of this
discord. The Greek pictured the world, somewhat as he
built his temple, with a certain simple grace ; while the
Germanic mind, like the Gothic vault with its impenetrable
shadows, saw the gloom and the evil close to what is fair.
Every people and every person in varying degree reveals a
peculiar feeling of the tension of the world.

At times the struggle is felt to occur just within and be-
hind the merely physical succession of day and night, of
sunlight and cloud, of summer and winter. These are trans-
muted by the imagination into an endless war of nature-
spirits, where the uncertain victory is only for a while
with either of the contending powers. For the Egyptians
the light of day must defeat a spirit of the night : Ra, the
Sun, sails through the heavens in his boat, and battles with
the great serpent Apep, demon of the abyss.1 The change
of the seasons became for many peoples a tale like that of

1 Book of the Dead, XXXIX, and elsewhere (Budge's tr.) ; Maspero :
Dawn of Civilization, tr. McClure, 1894, pp. 90 f.

4 Psychology of the Religious Life

the mourning for the lost Adonis and the joy in his return,
or of Persephone carried away to the sad abode of Hades,
but coming again for a while each year to her mother and
the upper air. What to the cold eye of science is but a
rhythm of day and night, of heat and cold, of budding and
leafless trees, becomes for the more mobile and child-like
mind a fierce combat of heroes or of monsters. Man's
sympathies are engaged, he becomes a partisan of those
powers which seem to accord with his own purposes, and
soon these great beings are felt to be at heart more friendly
than are the spirits which inhabit the night, the winter, or
the tempest. The gloomy north, the dark caverns of the
earth, the inhospitable spaces beneath the ground, thus
become associated usually with hostility, and are peopled
with malevolent forms ; while the south, the sun-lit moun-
tain summits, the bright upper air, are the home of kindly
powers. And these spirits, or gods, are not only opposite
in their attitude toward men ; they are at war with one
another. The Earth is thought of as at enmity with the
Sky, or the earth-born Giants give battle to the gods of the
mountain peaks and of the upper air ; and thus, by this
primitive feeling, there becomes fixed for all of us a con-
trast— not physical or spatial merely, but moral — between
low and high, between earth and heaven.

It is difficult, if not impossible, to say where this conflict
ceases to be physical and assumes a moral tone. If every-
thing marked by a feeling of friendliness or of hatred is
already within the circle of morality, then the tension of
the world is presented even in these myths as ethical in a
simple way, since it is a contest between forces that stand
for social union or disruption. But the moral nature of
the strife is clearer in the religions that see the world of
spirits divided into those who sympathize with human life
and whose aim for man is the same as man's purified aim
for himself, and into a host of spirits doing what they
can to thwart our plans and to harass the gods who are
our help.

Expressions of the Sense of Conflict 5

Various forms of such an opposition are found among
savage peoples, both closely related and not, of which the
following may serve as examples : There is an Algonquin
belief that beside the ' Master of Life ' who is the maker of
heaven and earth, and who loves men, there is a wicked
Manito, a spirit who tempts men to evil.1 And in one of
their legends the great lord Glooskap, who was worshipped
in after days by all the children of light, had an own twin-
brother, Wolf the Younger, that began his bad life by
bursting wilfully through his mother's side, killing her.2
— " It is believed by the Pottawatomies, that there are two
Great Spirits who govern the world. One is called Kitche-
monedo, or the Great Spirit, the other Matchemonedo, or
the Evil Spirit. The first is good and beneficent ; the other
wicked. Some believe that they are equally powerful, and
they offer homage and adoration through fear. Others
doubt which of the two is most powerful, and endeavour
to propitiate both. The great part, however, believe as I,
Podajokeed, do, that Kitchemonedo is the true Great Spirit,
who made the world, and called all things into being ; and
that Matchemonedo ought to be despised."3 — The same
opposition of good and evil is expressed also in an account
of the chief deities of the Abnaki, although here we are
definitely told that the evil god was the more powerful.4
— The Great Spirit of the Iroquois delights in virtue and in
the happiness of man, whom he created ; but the ' Evil-
minded ' (born at the same birth with the Great Spirit)
created monsters, poisonous plants, and reptiles, and is ever
watchful to scatter discord among men, and multiply their
calamities.6 — Likewise the Mandans believe in the existence
of a Great or Good Spirit, and also of an Evil Spirit, who
they said existed long before the Good Spirit, and was far

1 Schoolcraft : Myth of Hiawatha, 1856, pp. 254 f.

2 Leland : Algonquin Legends of New England, 1885, p. 15.

3 Schoolcraft : Archives of Aboriginal Knowledge, 1860, I, 320.

4 Bulletin No. 30, Bureau of American Ethnology, 1907, p. 4.

5 Morgan : League of the Iroquois, 1851, pp. 156 ff.

6 Psychology of the Religious Life

superior in power.1 — Farther south in America, among the
' Mozcas,' the god of the sun, called Zuhe or Bochica, was
thought to befriend man and to help ; while his wife,
Huythaca, the Moon, brought to man all manner of diffi-
culty and distress.2 — So, too, in Dutch Guiana there was
the firm belief in the existence of one supreme God, the
author of all Nature, and from him comes only good ; evils
come from the Yowahoos — devils who delight in inflicting
death, diseases, wounds, bruises, and all the unlucky acci-
dents of life. " To these Yowahoos, therefore, they direct
their supplications, and in affliction use various endeavours
to avert, or appease their malevolence ; while the adoration
of the supreme Deity is entirely neglected."3 — Among the
Africans of Southern Guinea, there is a belief in a spirit,
Ombwiri, good and gentle, and in a spirit, Onyambe, hateful
and wicked, of whom the people seldom speak, and always
show uneasiness and displeasure when his name is men-
tioned in their presence.4 — As a final example here, the
Khonds of India believe that Boora Pennu, the God of
Light, who created the earth and brings all blessings to man-
kind, has a wicked wife, Tari Pennu, the earth goddess, who
is jealous of her husband and tries to prevent his purposes.
She it is who instils into the heart of man every kind of
moral evil, " sowing the seeds of sin in mankind as into a
plowed field," and sends diseases, deadly poisons, and many
a trouble.5

Here the opposition is represented by individual beings
hostile to each other, and the cleft is definite and lasting.
A clearly conceived devil, as in much of Christianity or in
the Parsee religion, is in conflict with a spirit of goodness.
Judaism, with which so much of Christianity is joined, sets
forth in its canonical writings the antithesis of good and

1 Catlin : North American Indians, 1842, I, 156.

2 Piedrahita : Conquistas del Nuevo Reyno de Granada, pt. I, ch. III.

3 Natural History of Guiana, by a ' Gentleman of the Medical Faculty '
[Edw. Bancroft], 1769, pp. 308 ff.

1 Wilson: Western Africa, 1856, pp. 387, 217.
5 Macpherson : Memorials of Service in India, 1865, pp. 84 ff.

Expressions of the Sense of Conflict 7

evil in less sharpened form. The reporter of wrong, in the
Book of Job, is no more a demon than is Agni in the Vedas,
who too reports men's sins to the gods.1 From God himself
comes what men desire and what they hate : "I am the
Lord, and there is none else. I form the light, and create
darkness : I make peace, and create evil : I the Lord do
all these things."2 And in somewhat similar contrast, the
religion of Zarathustra with its polar opposition of right
and wrong, is closely related to the Vedic religion where the
antithesis of good and evil is far less pointed. In Buddhism
particularly, which is one of the later kindred of the Vedic
faith, neither the good nor the bad is seen as a supreme
Person ; but a great impersonal order contains on the one
side a kind of illusion, a desire for individuality, which is
evil ; while in contrast with this stands escape from per-
sonal existence, unconsciousness, and this alone is good.
Or perhaps more exactly one should say that for a great
division of the Buddhists there is neither God nor Devil,
although on another side, as we shall soon see, this im-
personal character of the opposition is not maintained, but
evil takes a personal form in the demon Mara.

But the variation in the sense of discord is revealed not
alone in a fluctuation between the personal and the imper-
sonal form of opposition. It has also its different ways, in
that the struggle is now projected outward chiefly, or again
is seen to lie largely in the soul of man. As the worshipper
gradually becomes aware that righteousness is the good
beyond all else, the work of evil seems to be directed toward
the human heart. The influence of the Evil One is felt
not so much in pain and outward misfortune, as in tempta-
tion. Especially do the powers of darkness try to prevent
those greatest revelations of the law which come to the
prophet and founder of the religion. The moments of
clearest insight are felt to be unusually fateful for the soul,
and are preceded or followed by a supreme struggle with

1 Vedic Hymns, IV, 3, 5 (XLVI, 325), tr. Oldenberg.
8 Isaiah, XLV, 6 f.

8 Psychology of the Religious Life

the foes of heaven. Zarathustra must meet and vanquish
the hell-born Angra Mainyu. " From the regions of the
north, from the regions of the north, forth rushed Angra
Mainyu, the deadly, the Daeva of the Daevas," but he was
met by the Holy One chanting the sacred words, " The Will
of the Lord is the law of holiness," and using also carnal
means — stones big as a house, supplied to him by the
Spirit of Goodness. Angra Mainyu commands the Teacher
to renounce the law of God, and promises him that he will
become a ruler of nations. But answering ' No,' the Holy
One completes his victory in a solemn prayer beginning,
"This I ask thee : teach me the truth, O Lord!"1 And
the Prince Sidartha, under the tree of enlightenment, must
overcome the tempter Mara and all his demon host before
he could become the perfect vessel of the law, the Buddha.
The troop of tempters — some with heads like snakes or
savage tigers — encircled on its four sides the Bodhi tree,
belching forth flames and steam. But they and all their
storm and conflict cannot move the Bodhisattva, " fixed
and well-assured." An angel host sing their confidence in
him, the arch-demon slinks away and soon his whole band
is scattered, " whilst from above a fall of heavenly flowers
pay their sweet tribute to the Bodhisattva." And soon
thereafter, now become the Buddha, he sees truth face to
face.2

Yet the refinement of the sense of harmony and discord
brings other things to pass. For a time the conflicting
forces are felt to lie asunder, to be alien to each other. But
in the subtler moods of the religious fancy, the evil and the
good are bound by the closest tie, often springing from the
same source. Even among the instances already given
from savage faith, the kindly and the ill-disposed spirits
are sometimes joined by the family bond : the kindly god
has a wicked wife or twin-brother. And other peoples have
expressed this curious feeling of the affinity of opposites.

1 Zend-Avesta, Vendldad, XIX, i (IV, 204 ff.), tr. Darmesteter.

2 Fo-Sho-Hing-Tsan-King, III, 13 f. (XIX, 147 ff.), tr. Beale.

Expressions of the Sense of Conflict 9

With the Greek, for whom the impulse was strong to con-
ceive the deepest contrast, not as of good-will and ill-will,
but as of beauty and ugliness, the limping grimy smith-god
Hephaestos is wedded, in the Homeric story, to Aphrodite,
goddess of love and beauty. The deformed god Bes of the
Egyptians is occupied with rouge, the mirror, and other
articles of the toilet.1 And in the Persian legend, the Demon,
Azi Dahaka — hideous, most fiendish, three-mouthed, three-
headed — has two wives, Savanghava& and Erenava&, the
fairest of all women, the most wonderful creatures of the
world.2 Perhaps in part by some kindred feeling of the
closeness of conflicting powers, Osiris, the Egyptian god of
blessing, has a twin-brother, Set, who becomes the god of
evil ;3 or Horus himself is two-headed, the one head being
of truth, the other of wickedness.4

But the Northern mind expresses in more romantic
imagery the closeness of evil to the good. Many of the gods
of the Teutons are themselves subject to some remarkable
defect : Baldr is mortal and is slain by means of the mistle-
toe, Hcjdhr is blind, Tyr lacks a hand, Odhin an eye.5 With
the Finns, the creative hero, Wainamoinen, sows in the
barren earth the seeds of trees and shrubs, and all grow
but the acorn. And when the oak, most desired of all,
finally springs up, it grows mightily until it fills all the
sky, and shuts out the light of sun and moon and stars,
and what is longed for becomes a curse. Yet the very tree
which brings peril to men and heroes, in the end becomes
a blessing. For when at last it has been felled, whoever
obtains from it a leaf or branch has gained the master-
magic, has eternal good, and delight that never fails.6 In

1 Steindorff : Religion of the Ancient Egyptians, 1905, p. 21. Cf. de la
Saussaye : Manual of the Science of Religion, tr. Colyer-Fergusson, 1891,
p. 412.

2 Zend-Avesta, Cos Yast, III, 14 (XXIII, 113).

3 Book of the Dead, XVII, 67 ff. ; IX, 3 ; IV, 2 ; Sayce : Religions
of Ancient Egypt and Babylonia, 1902, pp. 135, 153 f., 162 ; and cf. Rawlin-
son's note to Herodotus, Bk. II, ch. 171.

4 Book of the Dead, XVII, 27 ff. ; and cf. CLXXX, 35.

5 de la Saussaye : Religion of the Teutons, tr. Vos, 1902, pp. 255, 285.

6 Kalevala, Rune II (Crawford's translation, 1888, pp. 14 ff.)-

io Psychology of the Religious Life

strange alternation, evil here springs from good, and good
from ill. And in other ways, what to the mind of many
has seemed a fit source of goodness, is for this grim people
an origin of wrong. The Virgin Untamala gives fatherless
birth to a Son of Evil, Kullervo.1 And at the very crowning
of success in many an exploit, dark bodings issue from the
lips of a babe upon the floor.2 It would be difficult to
exceed the sombre shading, the moral irony, of such a view
as this.

But the differing feeling as to the intimacy of jarring
factors is expressed in still other ways. For some peoples
or types of mind the conflict is still in progress, while for
others peace has now been won and the evil has been sub-
dued. The struggle between the opposing forces is thus
for some a still present struggle ; for others it is a distant
tradition and had existence only in some dark antiquity.
The supporters of Boora and of Tari, gods of the Khonds
of India already mentioned, divide upon this point. The
one sect declares that Boora, the good spirit, has triumphed
over Tari, the spirit of evil, and as an abiding sign of her
discomfiture has imposed the cares of childbirth on her
sex, and has made her an instrument of his own moral rule,
permitting her to strike only where he desires to punish.
Tari's adherents, on the contrary, declare that she is un-
conquered and still maintains the struggle and has power
to bestow blessings and to prevent the coming of good
from Boora.3 With the Homeric Greeks, the great struggle
of the universe was referred to the dimmest past. The
Titans had long ago been defeated, and all the older race
of gods had been imprisoned far away. Thus the victory
for the new order had already been securely won. Far
different is it with Zarathustrism and with Christianity.
Here, too, there are accounts of ancient struggles between
the powers of darkness and of light ; but for both religions

1 Kalevala, Rune XXXI (Crawford, 498).

! Rune XIX (Crawford, 292 ff.) ; Rune XXV (Crawford, 399 f.).

3 Macpherson : Memorials of Service in India, 1865, pp. 87 f.

Expressions of the Sense of Conflict 1 1

there is a sublime conflict still in progress and long to last.
For the Persian religion, the Good Mind and the Evil have
still their separate realms, and upon men there is the re-
sponsibility of choosing aright between the rival powers.1
The ever-present fiends must still be smitten, especially
when night comes over the land. Then Sraosha, the never-
sleeping guardian of the works of Mazda, " protects all the
material world with his club uplifted, from the hour when
the sun is down."2 In the sacred writings of Christianity,
too, the Devil is a living active power. The whole armour
of God is needed to withstand his power. " For we wrestle
not against flesh and blood," it is said in the Epistle to the
Ephesians, " but against principalities, against powers,
against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against
wicked spirits in heavenly places."3 Our " adversary the
devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about, seeking whom he
may devour."4 And while the victory over him is assured,
and he is to be cast into a lake of fire and brimstone where
are the beast and the false prophet, and shall be tormented
day and night for ever and ever,5 yet this is not yet actually
accomplished, and can be seen only by the eye of faith.
The closest and most present fact is here the discord ;
while for the Greek we might say that faith was required
to see that the universe had ever been troubled to its heart.
But in many cases, along with the thought of a conflict
of great beings in the past, or perhaps instead of such a con-
flict, there is the representation of a discord or contradiction
between man's condition now and his life at some distant
epoch. Often the present miseries of the world are con-
trasted with a happy existence which men once had upon
the earth, and which in many cases they will again enjoy.
The golden age when Saturn ruled the world ; the ancient

1 Zend-Avesta, Gathas, XXX, i-ii (XXXI, 29 ft.).

2 Ibid., Srosh Yast, II (XXIII, 162 f.). For a view of Daevas
and evil in the Gathas, see esp. Yasna XXXII (XXXI, 56 ff.). By a
prudent regulation in Vendidad Vila, (IV, 83 f.), a surgeon, before being
licensed to practise on the faithful, must try his hand successfully upon
the worshippers of these demons.

3 Ephesians, VI, 12. * i Peter, V, 8. 5 Revelation, XX, 10.

1 2 Psychology of the Religious Life

time when, as the Egyptians believed, the gods reigned upon
earth ; the life in the happy Garden that lay eastward of
Eden wherein even the Lord delighted to walk — these are
familiar forms in which the thought appears. It is an
almost universal belief. We find men in modern India hold-
ing that there was a time when all enjoyed free intercourse
with the Creator, when goods were possessed in common
and there was no need of labour, and the beasts of the
forest were harmless, and men had the power to move
through the water and the air ; until a wicked spirit sowed
evil and changed it all.1 We find in ancient Mexico the
legend of the blessed reign of the god Quetzalcoatl, teacher
of morals, prohibiter of war, enemy of human sacrifice, in
whose time the earth brought forth in plenty ; until he was
driven to exile and wanderings by the bloody god Tetz-
catlipoca ; but only for a time, for white brothers of the
god of blessing were to come and rule men later in truth
and happiness — a hope which only for a moment seemed
fulfilled in the coming of the Spaniards.2 Here, as with
the Jews, the present was seen dark against the back-
ground of a happy life, both in the past and in the future.
And this, too, was the faith of the Avesta. For the Persians,
there was a time when Yima, the good shepherd, possessing
the awful glory of Mazda, was ruler over the seven regions
of the earth, and had despoiled the demons, and under his
sway there was no envy nor lack for men or flocks. Hunger
and thirst, old age and death, hot winds and cold, remained
from the world for a thousand years, until Yima began to
delight in falsehood, when the divine glory was seen to
depart from him thrice in the form of a bird.3 But a
Deliverer is to come. The Saoshyant, the Beneficent One,
will be born in due time, coming from the region of the
dawn. He will look upon the whole living world with
the eye of intelligence, with the eye of plenty, and his look

1 Macpherson : Memorials of Service in India, 1865, pp. 85 ff.

2 Bancroft : Native Races of the Pacific Coast, 1886, III, 250 ff. 259.

3 Zend-Avesta, Zamyad Yast, VII (XXIII, 293 ff.) ; G6s YasV, II
(XXIII, 112); and cf. Vendidad, II (IV, n ff.).

Expressions of the Sense of Conflict \ 3

shall bring immortality to the whole of the living creatures.
Then shall the world become the master of its wish, the
dead shall rise, the demon Drug shall perish, she and all
her hellish brood.1

Among the Chinese there was a time when the Grand
Course was followed, in the reign of the Sage Kings ; then
generosity and widespread love prevailed and all virtues.
No floods afflicted men, the earth gave forth wine, and
animals and men lived in mutual trust.2 This blessed age
of the Chinese was seen in sharp contrast with those bar-
barous times when even kings dwelt in caves or nests, and
ate their meat raw and with hair or feathers, and had only
skins for clothing, since they knew not fire nor the art of
weaving cloth, before sages arose to teach men how to live
and how to worship.3 Here the dark features of the present
life are seen against an even darker past, and the bright
against a brighter — a gloomy and a cheerful idealization
which seizes and exaggerates the opposing elements of ex-
perience. This double tendency is represented also among
other peoples, in that there appeared not merely a golden
age, but also, even in the past, a time of heavenly anger and
retribution — the gods visiting the earth with a flood, and
holding but the smallest remnant of men worthy to be
saved. There is consequently both a laus and a damnatio
temporis acti. But on the whole the temptation to glorify
antiquity has been more strong and universal.

In this respect we seem to be moved, in our thought of
remote time, by quite different impulses from those which
the unspoiled man feels with regard to distant places.
Modern tourists, like the old navigators, come home with a
large tale of the goods as well as the ills of obscure corners
of the earth. But in general, human beings love their own

1 Zend-Avesta, Vendidad, XIX, 5 (IV, 205) ; Farvardin Yast, XXVIII
(XXII, 220 f. and see note p. 195) ; Zamyad Yast, III, XV, XVI (XXIII,
290 f., 306 ff.).

2 Li AX VII, i, 2 (XXVII, 364 ff.) ; VII, 4, 16 (XXVII, 392 f.); cf .
Tao Teh King, I, 17, 18 (XXXIX, 60 f.).

3 Li Ki, VII, i, 8 f. (XXVII, 369).

14 Psychology of the Religious Life

sky. " It is not easy to persuade a native of Isfahan," we
are told, " that any European capital can be superior to
his native city."1 In a similar spirit, the head-man of Deh-
Shir, a most remote oasis-town of the sandy desert of
Persia, repeatedly expressed a doubt to an American visitor
whether any land could be half so beautiful as Iran.2 And
by the traveller in America to-day, each region is found to
be for its own dwellers best — much as the old missionary
Father Biard, centuries ago, found the Indians immeasur-
ably content and incredulous that the French could be
richer or more blest than they.3 This satisfaction with the
place of one's abode so struck the Persian that he felt im-
pelled to explain it. " Ahura Mazda spake unto Spitama
Zarathustra saying : ' I have made every land dear to its
dwellers, even though it had no charms whatever in it :
had I not made every land dear to its dwellers, even though
it had no charms whatever in it, then the whole living world
would have invaded the Airyana Vaego.'''4 Less care
seems to have been given to make men content with their
own times, perhaps because it is more difficult to leave
them.

What has been said regarding the present oppositions of
life and their heightened contrast in the past, applies also
to the future. For past and future are much alike as regions
for constructive imagination. The discordant elements of
the world are, in the future, to be set in still stronger con-
trast and given full development — the good and the evil
each going to its own place and finding its own reward.
The sense of the incongruity in the present facts is thus
expressed in an ideal past and an ideal future, against which
the present is seen in strong relief. But the ideal, in this
sense, need not give heed only to excellence ; there is an
evil ideal as well as a good. And so the present may be

1 Rawlinson's Herodotus, 4th ed. (1880), Vol. I, p. 260, note.

2 Jackson : " A Religion nearly Three Thousand Years Old," Century
Magazine, Sept., 1906, N.S., Vol. L, p. 695.

3 Jesuit Relations, ed. Thwaites, 1896, I, 173.

4 Zend-Avesta, Vendidad, I, I f. (IV, 4).

Expressions of the Sense of Conflict 1 5

seen against a dark setting of heroic wrong in antiquity
and of endless malignity and torment that is to come. One
may well doubt whether these haunting visions are due so
exclusively to the human sense of justice, as many have
believed, and to the desire to see it vindicated. They may
at least in part be but expressions of the satisfaction men
feel in whatever occurs on the grand scale — the fascination
of viewing without enduring pain, the delight in witnessing
destruction as well as growth. The conflicting sides of our
present life must, for very art's sake, if for no other reason,
be given somewhere a greater play than our actual experi-
ence now permits to them. The love of the impressive,
regardless of its moral quality, is deep within us, and only
late is it chastened and ruled by conscience and a sympathy
for human weal. Cruelty in children and in savages makes
us suspect its presence as a conquered though living factor
in more advanced society, no longer seeking to produce
suffering for its own sake, however, but taking a grim joy
in it when it does come to one's fellows, whether by war or
by the natural calamities of flood or fire, earthquake or
pestilence, or by the mere representation of suffering
in the form of tragedy upon the stage. The purgation by
pity and fear, which tragedy brings, is certainly not the
entire measure of its hold upon us.

But the sense that life and the world is tense with opposi-
tion is not confined to religion. And so we must look to
the appearance of such feelings elsewhere. The religious
imagination that hides evil within the good, or links beauty
close with ugliness, or, in contrary manner, puts them far
apart, expresses in its own way the very thoughts which
artists and philosophers have often presented as truths of
their own perceiving. For artists have long sought pure
beauty, and yet have often ended with a rich harmony
that is close to discord, a beauty that shows its power by
wresting victory from defeat. And just as religionists see
the conflict as having immense differences of depth, so
artists differ in their sense of the might of opposition.

1 6 Psychology of the Religious Life

Some feel only the conflict and not the final rest, while
others feel that there is no conflict. Great artists like
Dante, though they see the struggle of opposing aims, yet
see it as but partial, and the strength and order of the whole
remain unbroken in the clash.

Philosophy shows the same impulses and the same
diversity. With some the opposition between the different
orders of reality is illusory or superficial ; with others it
goes deeper, and the universe is divided into realms distinct
—like sense and reason in parts of the Platonic system, or
mind and matter in much of Scottish thought. Still other
philosophers — like those myth-makers who tell us that evil
is brother to the good, or that beauty is the bride of ugliness
— feel that every reality is bound inwardly to its own
opponent. Socrates, in his last days in prison, is represented
as dwelling on the closeness of pleasure to pain, as though
they had two bodies joined by a single head. Lao-tze tells
us that existence and non-existence give birth the one to the
other ; that difficulty produces ease, and ease brings diffi-
culty1— reminding one of Hegel's elaborate system, where
opposites generate each other. All such thinkers feel that,
close to every truth, lurks its logical foe, its contradiction.
And where the perfect, or the ideal, is still believed in by
them, it is a perfection which involves an inner struggle ;
it subdues and brings to union all the jarring elements of
life. The strife and strain of the world, which art and
religion find by their peculiar methods, is here discovered
and expressed in a purely intellectual form.

This feeling that the Best is no placid best, but has the
tense calm of a victor whose foe is down but not destroyed —
this feeling may help us to understand a fact which will
meet us more than once. Men are prone to inconsistency
in religion, as in politics or art. But there is this difference,
that the religious seem at times less anxious to avoid such
inconsistencies, and appear even to take some joy in the
puzzle and paradox of contradiction. In Homer the gods

1 TAo Teh A'ing, I, 2 (XXXIX, 48).

Expressions of the Sense of Conflict 17

are declared to live in bliss, and yet their sorrows are re-
counted. The Finnish god Ukko is omniscient, yet does
not know the hiding-place of the sun. The motives for such
contradiction are many and intricate, but to those that
will be given later1 might well be added this, that contra-
dictory statements as to the nature of the gods perhaps set
forth, as by a kind of rhetorical symbol, the inscrutable
oppositions, the mystery of divinity. The very shock of
verbal contradiction stirs simple men to appreciate the
strangeness, the rarity, of the object revered. Later the
mind may care to thread its way through the maze of
opposition, and so to interpret it that there may seem no
great strife. But at the moment, the very fact of contra-
diction seems appropriate to a theme so high. No mere
bravado leads old Sir Thomas Browne to declare that,
far from being dismayed by intellectual obstacles to belief,
there are not impossibilities enough in religion for an active
faith. Something of this spirit makes it perhaps easier for
those who bring together the materials of sacred scripture,
the world over, to permit the strangest incongruities to
occur in different parts of the canon. Much of it is doubt-
less due to want of logical acumen, as well as to sheer in-
ability to tamper with what has been handed down. But
the divine nature is also for them so rich, so majestic, that
it may well be set forth in opposite ways.

Perhaps in part from a motive like this come such state-
ments, in the Vedas, as that Agni, the son of the gods, has
become their father ; 2 or that Agni, the calf, gives birth by
itself to its own mothers ;3 that the Maruts are self-born and
born of Pmni.4 Likewise the scripture of ancient Egypt
speaks of the gods who " have given birth to their own
fathers " ;5 and Ra, while self-begotten and self-born, yet

1 See pp. 237 ff.

2 Vedic Hymns, I, 69, 2 (XLVI, 67).

3 Ibid.. 95- 4 (XLVI, 114).

4 Ibid., 168, 2, 9 (XXXII, 279 f.); cf. Hymns of the Atharva-
Veda, V, 21, u (XLII, 132) ; and pp. 231 ft. of the present vol.

5 Book of the Dead, CLII, 2 ; and cf, CLIIlA, and CLIIIs.

1 8 Psychology of the Religious Life

has now Nut or again Hathor for his mother.1 The inter-
preter of myths might point to the processes in Nature which
would, without contradiction, give countenance to some
of these expressions. But the very contradictions them-
selves may well have had for the mind of the poet-worshipper
their own inherent fitness. In the Koran we read : ' Verily,
with difficulty is ease ! verily, with difficulty is ease ! And
when thou art at leisure then toil, and for the Lord do thou
yearn ! "2 The appropriateness of such oppositions seems
also to be felt in describing objects where religion borders on
science. The " self within the heart," in the Upanishads,
is declared to be smaller than a grain of rice, than a grain
of barley or of mustard, smaller than a canary seed, than
even the kernel of a canary seed — greater than earth, sky,
heaven, greater than all the worlds.3 And secular art
constantly uses sharp and amazing transitions as one of its
accepted means — whether it be in the warring light
and shadow of Dutch painting, or in the antithesis of
common folk-tales, as when, at the glad wedding of the
Rainbow Maiden, a witch tells of the horrors of her own
wedded life,4 or when that wonderful ox which is brought
to the wedding feast, so large that no man can slaughter it,
so large that a swallow would need a day to fly from one
horn-tip to the other, can be slain only by a pigmy whose
bed is in a tiny sea-shell.6 Something of a like spirit is in
all those tales where defeat comes from the very direction
whence help was to be expected : Croesus, having dreamt
that his son Atys shall die by an iron weapon, attempts to
guard him from the danger. But in a boar hunt, ere long,
Atys is killed accidentally by the spear of one who was
most attached to Crcesus, having received from him a great
favour ; 6 thus from a friend comes the fatal blow. The

1 Book of the Dead, Hymn to Ra, and Hymn to the Setting Sun
(Budge, 15 f., 87 f.).

* Koran, XCIV (IX, 335), Palmer's tr.

3 7<Aandogya-Upanishad, III, 14, 3 (I, 48), Miiller's tr.

« Kalevala, Rune XXIII (Crawford, 364 ff.).

6 Ibid., Rune XX (Crawford, 299 ff.).

6 Herodotus, I, 34 ff.

Expressions of the Sense of Conflict 1 9

mystic temper which delights in denying to the Good every-
thing that can be affirmed, and in affirming everything that
can be denied, is but the extremity of that mood which is
pleased to declare that the weak things of this world shall
confound the mighty, that the non-existent penetrates all
things,1 that swift apprehension is the beginning of
stupidity, 2 and which makes the lamb the symbol of power,
and the felon's cross the emblem of a moral conquest.
There is here a grave love of paradox, a sublime spiritual
humour, as if religion by its very might could set at naught
all common laws. The religionist of this type — and all
religion as it develops seems to show the character — thus
sees the action of the universe as a divine comedy. The
confidence which high religions usually have that the
righteous order is, or is to be, triumphant is among the
impressive things of human nature and of history.

Some of the many forms in which men represent to them-
selves a large or universal opposition have passed before
us. We must at best confess our ignorance of much that
surrounds and penetrates this sense of conflict. And yet in
many ways the mystery can be lessened. The outer con-
flict is largely an outward projection of a discord and unrest
within the mind, where desire fights with desire, and aim
stands sharp against accomplishment. To trace something
of the character of this conflict is the purpose of what
follows ; and so there need be no thought as yet of explana-
tion. The various expressions of the sense of discord are
doubtless but the summing-up, in pictorial or intellectual
form, of the endless oppositions to which reverence leads.

1 Tao Teh King, II, 43 (XXXIX, 87).

2 Ibid., 38, 6 (XXXIX, 80 f.).

PART I

CONFLICTS IN REGARD TO FEELING
AND EMOTION

CHAPTER I

APPRECIATION AND CONTEMPT OF SELF

MEN have so long been described as delighting in their
own attainments, that literature often transmits this
account as though it were an axiom. Self-depreciation has
always seemed a pretence, and humility a mask, to some
observers of mankind. But while many do habitually take
an open or secret pleasure in themselves, there are minds of
a different mould. For such, their own possessions — house
or clothing, body, voice, opinions or intents — always seem
inferior in quality and impressiveness to what is connected
with the personality of others. For them, an object loses
character at once when detached from their companions
and associated with themselves. They obtain the exact
counterpart of what they admired among the belongings of
some chance acquaintance, and it soon seems poor and
ineffectual. They constantly see themselves as less signifi-
cant than men who in reality fall far short of them
in power. The self-depreciating, the self-distrustful type
is as real, if not as common, as the self-glorifying,
the self-confident. And this difference appears in re-
ligion. Individuals and whole societies express, in one
form or another, a chastened self-esteem and self-con-
fidence, while others feel something like pity and misgiving
for themselves and all their powers.

Yet in any well-developed religion it is customary to dis-
criminate, and it is rare that a society or even an individual
commends or condemns without reserve all that may be
called the self. The feeling of satisfaction or of disapproval

23

24 Psychology of the Religious Life

is directed toward parts or potentialities of the self, rather
than toward its unbroken mass. And yet the portion that
is regarded with some approach to commendation and the
part that is viewed with pain are often so proportioned that
there results a dominant feeling which may readily be
classed as pleasure or dislike. Illustrations of this diver-
gence may be given.

There are religions, like that presented in the Zend-Avesta,
which pass no condemnation on many of the fundamental
instincts of the individual ; while there are others, notably
of India, which find little or nothing in man that is worthy
of respect, and in which the chief labour of the faithful is to
kill their deepest natural powers. The Parsee could without
shame pray for happiness and long life on earth, with wealth
and many children, and for life after death. He was urged to
cultivate his ordinary powers of intelligence, as well as
those higher activities of intuition which more especially
lead to the divine. The Buddhist also values knowledge,
and much is said of developing higher powers. But intellect
and all the other processes of thought are here forcibly limited
and rendered blank, as in certain forms of the hypnotic
trance ; and all thinking that has any definite object
before it, or that is free and natural as in practical life,
must be avoided by him who would attain the infinite rest.
Not alone real thought, however, but affection and desire,
especially all forms of the desire for individual existence,1
are enemies of the Good. All particular and definite exist-
ence, all that man commonly calls himself, is felt as an in-
tolerable burden, and Nirvana is the unspeakable peace of
escape from a personal and individual life. " Untarnished
by the desire of future life " is an expression that makes
this temper clear.2 All those questions and ideas that tend
to impress one with his own importance or own stability
are to be avoided. Unwise is it to ask, " Have I existed
during the ages that are past, or have I not ? Shall I exist

1 At least in much of the doctrine of southern Buddhism.

2 Maha-Parinibbana-Sutta, II, 9 (XI, 27). Rhys Davids's tr.

Appreciation and Contempt of Self 25

during the ages of the future, or shall I not ? ' And to get
the notion that " this soul of mine is permanent, lasting,
eternal, and will continue for ever and ever " — this is
" walking in delusion, the jungle of delusion, the wilderness
of delusion, the writhing of delusion."1

The contrast which is found between the spirit of much
of Indian religion and that of ancient Persia is repeated
within the limits of Christianity in its historic develop-
ment. The life of Jesus, as well as his verbal doctrine,
shows no insistence that men should sweep away their
native inner endowment and bring entirely different im-
pulses in their place. He declared, it is true, that there
must be some deep change which might be described as a re-
beginning of life, as a second birth. Yet the man born of
the spirit was still to have affection and desire, was still to
be discriminating and awake. There was to be sought a
change in the direction, or object, of men's activities ; rather
than their extinction. Men were to continue to desire, but
to desire what was right. The self was not to be annihilated ;
it was to be assigned its due importance ; we must not
permit our personal impulses to outrank the will of God.

But in the historic development of Christianity there has
been ample presentment of the opposite view. Life has
been regarded as properly a study in self-effacement, in
pouring contempt on all our native powers. Human in-
tellect, or reason, has been declared to be utterly sterile, or
productive of nothing but illusion ; the human will is
powerless or perverse, the human affections vile. This
doctrine of total depravity, whatever else it may be, is an
intellectual form under which there masks itself a feeling
of self-abhorrence. The whole nature of man is corrupt
and worthless ; it begins to have value only as there comes
from without something to replace or vivify it.

But there are ideas other than that of total depravity
that are supported or suppressed by the character of the
feeling toward the self. The belief in predestination, and
1 Sabbasava Sutta, 9 S. (XI, 298 f.) abbreviated.

26 Psychology of the Religious Life

the contrary conviction, of personal freedom and respon-
sibility, would seem to have some of their springs in this
same region — the doctrine of freedom issuing in part from
the feeling of self-value, while the sense of degradation, of
worthlessness, gives colour to the belief that all man's acts
are fatally impelled by some power without. For there
seems good reason to think that feeling, in all such cases,
is the more primitive thing and contributes more to shaping
doctrine than does pure logic and the intellect. Conviction
comes largely in answer to feeling, rather than from the
premisses which later are found to support it. Any too
universal assertion, however, must be avoided. For the
intellect is amazingly fertile in the inner life, and one would
be rash who would say that doctrinal oppositions never
spring directly from the fondness for denial as a purely
dialectic play. Any belief whatever will usually find its
opposite formulated sooner or later by mere intellectual
contrariety, by mere ' association by dissimilarity.' Yet
where such opposite doctrines do not remain airy cobwebs,
but move men powerfully and become the rallying cries of
parties, we may well expect to find something in the im-
pulses and the affections that gives aid and comfort to each
of the opposing views. The man who is utterly cast down,
or the people that for ever finds itself between the hammer
and the anvil, naturally inclines to believe that all things
are accomplished by some higher power, some god or Fate.
The contrary belief, that man has resident force to originate
action, and may be held accountable for what he does,
implies some consciousness of personal worth, a certain
self-esteem. Whatever ennobles the individual in his own
eyes works to convince him of freedom and responsibility,
while we must also freely admit that such a conviction
wonderfully reacts to heighten the valuation of the self.

Yet it is far easier to point out the influence exercised by
such feelings than to say why this man is full of self-satis-
faction and that one humble. It certainly does not depend
on success or failure, as the world sees these things. A

Appreciation and Contempt of Self 27

homeless wanderer I recently met, who earned an occasional
lodging and a meal, was blessed with a store of confidence
and self-appreciation that would have fitted out a score of
common men. The immense difference between a large
portion of the people of Asia and a large group in Europe
and America, in regard to the feeling of personal freedom,
cannot be attributed to any lasting difference in the worldly
prosperity of the two regions. And while differences in the
tone of government may have fostered or repressed the
sense of individual importance, yet it is doubtful whether
the tone of government itself in the two cases has not been
largely determined by a prevalent difference of self-regard
in the two parts of the world.

Religion upon both sides of this great division, however,
shows a strange characteristic which meets one at many
turns — each side of the opposition repeats within, and upon
a smaller scale, the very contrast which exists between
itself and what stands without. Christianity, which pre-
sents in the main a tempered self-esteem, inclines, in some
of its branches, to the strongest self-depreciation ; and
although it is essentially committed to the doctrine of per-
sonal freedom, yet it has not been without inclination to-
ward the belief in the powerlessness of man. And this is
true of Islam and of other religions of the East. The Koran
is almost fearlessly consistent in its stress on predestination :
it teaches that every act of every being is set down before-
hand in the divine record. " No accident befalls in the
earth, or in yourselves, but it was in the Book, before we
created them ; verily that is easy unto God."1 And not
only has God hung to each man's neck an augury which
will be spread open for him at the resurrection day,2 but
' every nation has its appointed time, and when their
appointed time comes they cannot keep it back an hour,
nor can they bring it on."3 As in the doctrine of some
men nearer home, many of mankind as well as of the jinns

1 Koran, LVII (IX, 269). a Ibid., XVII (IX, 2 f.).

3 Ibid., VII (VI, 141).

28 Psychology of the Religious Life

are created beforehand for hell ; * nor can any person believe
and be saved, except by divine permission.2 And while
the divine action is thus occasionally described, with reserve,
as of mere permission, God is elsewhere represented as
doing all that man thinks himself to do : "Ye did not slay
them," men are told, regarding deeds in war, " but it was
God who slew them, nor didst thou shoot when thou didst
shoot, but God did shoot."3 Yet theologians of Islam
have represented with ardour the view, difficult to reconcile
with the main teaching of the Koran, that the human will
is free, and that evil must not be attributed to God.4
Hindu thought, also, with all its stress on the endless chain
of causes in which every human act is normally bound, has
not been without its representatives of the opposite view,
according to which the individual is responsible for his acts
— as, among others, that Samkhya school of pluralists, who
believe that there is salvation for the individual and that the
soul is free when once it recognizes its own character and, by
its look of recognition, breaks the bond between itself and
Nature.6 But the feeling of the Orient seems to lean more
readily the other way. When the great god Krishna, dis-
guised as a charioteer, instructs Arguna upon the field of
battle, he says : " Even without you the warriors standing
in the adverse hosts shall all cease to be. All these have
been already killed by me. Be only the instrument, O
Savyasa&n ! Whom I have killed do you kill."6 Or, to
take the telling words of the Chinese Chuang Tzu, we are
but molten metal to be cast in whatever form God wills.
' Suppose that the boiling metal in a smelting-pot were to
bubble up and say, ' Make of me an Excalibur ' ; ' he
writes, " I think the caster would reject that metal as un-
canny. And if a sinner like myself were to say to God,
' Make of me a man, make of me a man/ I think he, too,
would reject me as uncanny. The universe is the smelting-

1 Koran, VII (VI, 160). z Ibid., X (VI, 204).

3 Ibid., VIII (VI, 165). * Palmer: Introd. to Qur'an (VI, p. Ixxv.).

6 Garbe : Die Sdmkhya-Philosnphie, 1894, pp. 251, 323 fi.

6 Bhagavadgita, XI (VIII, 96), w. omissions ; Trimbak Telang's tr.

Appreciation and Contempt of Self 29

pot, and God is the caster. I shall go whithersoever I am
sent, to wake unconscious of the past, as a man wakes
from a dreamless sleep."1 Contrast this with lines which
have seemed to some in our part of the world to set forth
a right feeling toward the universe and toward one's self :

" It matters not how strait the gate,

How charged with punishment the scroll,
I am the master of my fate ;
I am the captain of my soul."

This is equalled in temper only by Whitman's rapt exclama-
tion over himself, " Walt Whitman, a kosmos, of Manhattan
the Son," or by the diffident words of Thomas Davidson,
' God is afraid of me." It is youth opposed to age, modern-
ness against antiquity, the extremely masculine against
the feminine feeling of the relation of one's powers to the
larger world about.

Indeed, as for some it seems well to cultivate chiefly the
feeling of nothingness, so for others a moderated self-
reliance passes over into a kind of mania, or inflation, of
the self. There are pious exercises in some lands just to
quiet all thought of the insufficiency of the self. The de-
votee is at first to think that the Illimitable, the Immortal,
is below, above, in west and east, in north and south, is
the entire world. And then it follows that I am below,
above, in west and east, in north and south ; I am this entire
world I * Even were the self here no longer identified with
the ' empirical ego/ there would still seem to be a kind of
glorification of the common self-reliant mood.

It is characteristic of the feeling of dependence, on the
other hand, that the Japanese Uchimura speaks of God as
his Lord and Husband, 3 and finds great comfort in the
doctrine of predestination. He writes : " June 3. — Studied
the doctrine of Predestination, and was strongly impressed

1 Chuang Tzii, tr. Giles, 1889, p. 82.

2 Chandogya Up., VII, 23 ff., in Deussen's tr. : Sechsig Upanishad's
des Veda, 1897, p. 185. Kf

3 Diary of a Japanese Convert [1895], p. 86.

30 Psychology of the Religious Life

with its import. Heart leaped with joy. Temptations seem
to vanish away, and all the noble qualities of my mind burn
with emotion. Where is fear, where is the power of the
tempter, if I am one of God's chosen elects, predestinated
for his heirship before the foundation of the world ! " J
Thus Calvinism is repellent only to those who, according
to its doctrine, are foreordained to be repelled. It is a
message of joy to the heart emotionally attuned to it.
Nor need the joy come entirely from the thought that the
person himself is elected to be eternally saved. A satisfaction
almost as deep, although of a more sable colouring, ap-
parently has filled men who believed that, for the glory of
God, they were chosen to be for ever damned.

In thus surmising that the sense of freedom is somehow
connected with self-appreciation, and necessitation with
humility, a point has been reached where one may perhaps
begin to see that these contrasting emotions influence not
alone one's theory of the will or of personal efficiency ;
they are of importance also for the picture we make of
human destiny after death. The opposition in the feelings
we are considering tends to find expression in contrary
doctrines regarding the future life. The sense of personal
worth or worthlessness is reflected in the belief in immor-
tality or in the final extinction at least of consciousness.
A readiness to believe in ultimate extinction is a sign of
self-depreciation ; while the opposite feeling — that in some
way this self of mine is treasured, is essential to the world —
supports the idea that death is but a superficial experience,
and that in spite of it the individual soul lives on. There
are many contributing sources to the belief in the soul and
in its continuance : the subtle coining and going of air from
lips and nostrils ; the pulsations of heart and arteries ; the
living images which come to the mind in sleep ; shadows,
reflections in water or in the pupil of the eye, 2 and doubtless

1 Diary, p. 152.

3 Monseur : " L'ame pupilline," Revue de I'histoire des religions,
LI (1905), p. i ; " L'ame poucet," ibid., p. 361.

Appreciation and Contempt of Self 3 1

much beside, if one were to name only the influences among
savage men. But that these suggestions of a life independent
of the body and of death obtain from humanity such a ready
and continued response must be due to some inner en-
couragement which they receive from feeling — from the
interest and value which conscious existence itself has for
most of us. That shadows and dreams and all the mechan-
ism by which the belief in immortality is often explained
are not of themselves the whole account, is clear from the
fact that the belief in immortality may weaken or entirely
disappear without noticeable loss of shadow or in the power
of dreaming.

It will be best not to attempt to illustrate the innumerable
forms of the belief in the spirit and in its life after death.
We may let the idea of the Malay be for us a type of much
of primitive thought. The soul for the Malay is about as
large as the thumb, but otherwise it is a fair copy of the
actual person, in form and in complexion. Yet it has not
the physical solidity of the body, being filmy, shadowy,
and possessed of power to flit and flash from place to place. x
The natural man believes, too, in continuance after death.
The shadow, or soul, of the Ojibwa follows a wide beaten
path that leads to a country in the west. Beyond a deep
and rapid water, his soul comes to a long lodge where it
finds all his relatives for generations past, who with glad-
ness welcome him to their land where is abundant game
and pleasures of many kinds.2

And this belief in a continued life is developed feebly or
with vigour in many of the great religions. The Moham-
medan picture of celestial bliss is well known, where carpets
of silk and gold, and gushing springs and luscious fruits and
fair companions await the faithful ; while eternal fire and
hot water and filth are for the unbelievers. 3 In the character
of the soul's life, as well as in the vividness with which it

1 Skeat : Malay Magic, 1900, p. 47.

2 Schoolcraft : Archives of Aboriginal Knowledge, 1860, II, 135.

3 See pp. 46 and 48 f.

32 Psychology of the Religious Life

was imagined, the Arab's faith here is in striking contrast
to that of the ancient Hebrew, whose realm of Sheol pro-
vided only an existence vague and bloodless. More like
the Arab's, but with less emphasis on the satisfaction or
disappointment of eye and skin and palate, is the sharp
imagery of the ancient Persian. The souls of daeva-wor-
shippers and of the righteous must alike cross the fateful
Kinvad Bridge, where a maid distinguishes the evil from
the good. The spirits of the evil fall into the depths of
the dark, horrid world of hell, while the good come to the
presence of the heavenly gods, to an undecaying world, the
golden seat of Ahura Mazda.1 Or, according to another
account, the blessed soul is met by his conscience, as a
beauteous maid, and moving through fair-scented airs to-
ward the south, reaches the three heavens — of thought, of
word, and of deed — and passing through them enters the
fourth heaven, of endless light. The wicked soul, conducted
through stench unspeakable, is met by a foul hag, his con-
science, and passes through the three hells, of thought, of
word, and of deed, to the fourth hell, of endless gloom.2

The expectation of a definite personal continuance, of
which the foregoing may serve for scanty illustration,
stands opposed to the belief in final unconsciousness or ab-
sorption, and the desire for such an end. World-weariness,
where nearly all impressions are felt as pain, has in some
places caused life itself to seem a burden, and nothing is
sought more earnestly than death, death without return of
thought. It is in part a carrying out fully of that contempt
of self which many religionists urge, but usually with a
reservation. It is also perhaps a protest and reaction
against the doctrine of endless rebirth, which rests like an
obsession upon some minds. Better no life at all, many a
Hindu must have felt, than be bound to the wheel that for-
ever makes its round. The very limitlessness of this con-
ception of the transmigrating soul, like the endless repetition

1 Zend-Avesta, Vendiddd, XIX, 29-32, 47 (IV. 212 fit., 218).
* Ibid., Yast XXII (XXIII, 314 ff.).

Appreciation and Contempt of Self 33

of the Buddhist worlds, each with its own heaven, its own
hell — the pointlessness, the failure to give anything eminent
upon which the eye may rest, helps to produce an intellectual
vertigo and revulsion, and spiritual suicide seems the one
thing wholly to be sought.

In communities where a machine-like round of life has
not seemed part of personality, men have been far less in-
clined to feel that existence is an evil through and through.
There is a core of experience — even my contemplation and
love of the Ideal, if nothing else — which is felt to be worth
saving, and to be a force which of itself does help to save.
This feeling that I have something within which is eternally
of worth, and which the universal power will protect and
treasure, marks the young and hopeful type the world over.
There is a fine spiritual egoism in the belief in immortality
which goes well with the sense of present freedom, and with
all those social and political expressions of personal im-
portance so common in the West.

Even the belief in eternal damnation, which for the mo-
ment might seem a mark of degradation, is in reality an
inverted utterance of the feeling of individual worth. Any-
one must be important who calls for endless wrath. Though
animals have often been subject to trial before the law,
and though in primitive thought certain animals may be
accursed or be objects of divine honour, yet no great religion,
so far as I know, has given to the beasts the dignity of
being, like men, the individual objects of unending heavenly
retribution. Some have declared for animals in heaven,
although perhaps more for man's sake than for the animals'.
The world still awaits the preacher of their eternal damna-
tion, much as their conduct at times suggests the thought.

There remains but one further illustration of the many
forms in which the feeling of self-appreciation or of con-
tempt here comes to light. The feeling with which man
regards himself affects decidedly his view of the relation
between himself and God. He who can see but little in
the universe beside himself is apt to feel small need of other
D

34 Psychology of the Religious Life

worship. Whether there is or is not any direct connection
between the two, the Buddhist's morbid absorption in the
self, even in the very effort to escape the self, goes well
with the strain of atheism in this religion. One of its most
careful students has described Buddhism as " simply a
system of earnest self-culture and self-control."1 And this
account seems well supported by the records. There is a
confident reliance on one's own powers, a refusal to look
to any other for help, that is saved from irreligion only by
the elevation of its tone. " Therefore, O Ananda, be ye
lamps unto yourselves," says the Blessed One. 'Be ye a
refuge to yourselves. Betake yourselves to no external
refuge. Hold fast to the truth as a lamp. Hold fast as a
refuge to the truth. Look not for refuge to anyone besides
yourselves."2 The Master himself has had no teacher ;
he has reached the truth by himself alone : " Self-taught
in this profoundest doctrine, I have arrived at superhuman
wisdom. That which behoves the world to learn, but
through the world no learner found, / now myself and by
myself have learned throughout."3 And in the passage
which I am about to give, the glorying in the isolation of
the self is the more striking since it is an account, not of
Gotama's own enlightenment, but of his convert Subhadda's :
" And e'er long he attained to that supreme goal of the
higher life for the sake of which men go out from all and
every household gain and comfort to become houseless
wanderers — yea, that supreme goal did he, by himself, and
while yet in this visible world, bring himself to the knowledge
of, and continue to realize, and to see face to face ! And he
became conscious that birth was at an end, that the higher
life had been fulfilled, that all that should be done had been
accomplished, and that after this present life there would
be no beyond."4

Among the same people in whom was found this moral

1 Rhys Davids : Buddhist Suttas, p. 62, note.

2 Maha-Parinibbana-Sutta, II, 33 (XI, 38).

3 Fo-Sho-Hing-Tsan-King, III, 15, 1205 f. (XIX, 169 f.), italics added.
- Maha-Parinibbana-Sutta, V, 68 (XI, 110), italics added.

Appreciation and Contempt of Self 35

self-reliance that seeks no help from God, there appeared
the very opposite type of religion — a religion which cannot
discern any reality whatever or any efficacy in one's own
efforts, but sees God as the sole form of all existence. " I
am the self, O Gudakesa ! seated in the heart of all beings,"
says Krishna. " I am the beginning and the middle and
the end also of all beings. I am Vishwu among the Adityas,
the beaming sun among the shining bodies. I am Marifo
among the Maruts. I am Indra among the gods. And I
am mind among the senses. I am consciousness in living
beings."1 And again : " The Lord, O Arguna ! is seated
in the region of the heart of all beings, turning round all
beings as though mounted on a machine, by his delusion."2
But between these two extremes of religion — neither of
which leaves any real inter-relation between man and God,
since in each case one of the related terms has disappeared —
there are many forms of faith. The thought that man, while
not identical with the Almighty, is yet kindred to him, is
darkly represented in the Koran. Adam not only has in
him the breath of the Creator, as in Genesis, but God com-
mands the angels to adore Adam, and " they adored him
save only Iblis, who refused and was too proud and became
one of the misbelievers."3 In Judaism, from which Mo-
hammed drew so much, the separation between man and
God was in some ways greater. For while man was created
in the divine image, and in his nostrils was the very breath
of God, yet his prime sin was to seek to know what was
for the gods alone to know, and to aspire to become as the
gods. In contrast with this, the reverent Parsees could
pray that they might themselves become gods, might be-
come Ahura Mazdas.4 The Egyptian not merely prayed
that he might become an Osiris ; he foresaw himself so
exalted that the very gods did him homage.5 With more

1 Bhagavadgita, X (VIII, 88), shortened.
8 Ibid., XVIII (VIII, 129).

3 Koran, II (VI. 5) ; cf. VII (VI. 138 f.), XV (VI, 246 f.), etc.

4 Zend-Avesta, Gathas, XXX, 9 (XXXI, 34), Mills's tr.

8 Book of the Dead, ' The Judgment ' (Budge, p. 30), and XI, 2 ;
CLXIX, 26 f. ; CLXXII, 10 ; CXXXIII, 8 f. ; CLXXVIII, 15 ; etc.

36 Psychology of the Religious Life

sobriety, the link between the human and the divine is ex-
pressed by other peoples in other ways — as a relation of
slave and master, or again, as that of child and father, or
finally as the tie which binds friend to friend. The increas-
ing elevation of the human side of this relation, from utter
subjection until we have that approach to equality which
goes with friendship, sets forth in the form of picture a
change in the sense of individual worth. Yet feelings which
correspond to all three of these images may exist in the
same religion. In the New Testament occurs the designa-
tion, " Paul, a slave of Jesus Christ " ; and in contrast to
such an expression of lowliness is the Sonship of which Jesus
himself so often spoke — a type of relation which other
religions have used, but with less insistence and with a less
central place. That the soul and its Ideal are related to
each other as are friends is also caught by religious minds
beyond the confines of Christendom. In the Zend-Avesta
we find the prayer that helpful grace may be given, " as
friend bestows on friend."1 And in the Rig- Veda, the
hymns to Agni continually refer to him as the Friend of
men, the god who dwells humbly at their very hearth.
But in Christianity the tie between Jesus and his disciples,
which he declares may typify the spirit which should exist
between God and man, is even more pronouncedly made
to be the attitude of friendship. Such a word now seems
no longer a bit of imagery, but a sober attempt to express
reality. " Henceforth I call you not servants ; for the
servant knoweth not what his lord doeth ; but I have called
you friends."2 This attempt to inspire the worshipper with
the thought that he is not the bondsman but the free
associate of divinity has not always, in the Christian Church,
called forth a ready sympathy. Times have often come
when men have been urged to an attitude toward God more
like that of subjection to an autocrat. Yet the Founder's
thought that, not subjection, but sonship or friendship is
desired, has unquestionably helped to school the sentiments.

i Gathas, XLVI, 2 (XXXI, 135). * John, XV, 15.

Appreciation and Contempt of Self 37

There has thus existed for the Christian community, partly
because of this education, and perhaps partly because of
some inherent affinity for the doctrine, a consciousness of
self- value corresponding to the thought that man has in him
something of the very nature of his God.

In regard to religious self-depreciation and esteem it may
be said that the two terms often are conjoined ; both are
constituents, in many cases, of the one experience. That
eerie doubling of personality, which is so important a dis-
covery in modern psychology, is but an extreme instance of
what is common and natural with many religious minds.
Often the devout man feels that he is no simple and single
self ; his nature is dual and in conflict, and each of the con-
tending forces within him has a kind of organization and
selfhood of its own. " The good that I would I do not :
but the evil which I would not, that I do. Now if I do that
I would not, it is no more I that do it, but sin that dwelleth
in me. O wretched man that I am ! who shall deliver me
from the body of this death ? "*

Now wherever there is this inner contest, different feelings
greet the partial selves. The judicial, or imperial, self will
normally love the one and hate the other ; rarely is there
want of preference. A value is felt to inhere in one of the
rivals, which is wanting to the other, and thus the person
feels for himself both appreciation and contempt. Occa-
sionally, however, the sense of utter defeat to all the higher
impulses may leave nothing but humility or despair ; or,
again, there may be such an absence of the doubling of
personality, or such weakness to the conflict — perhaps be-
cause the lower impulses are so feeble or else so strong —
that the man views himself with perfect acquiescence or
with a feeling near to veneration. The singleness or com-
plexity of the religious sentiment here depends upon the
organization of the self, and there clearly is more than a
single type. The complacent, self-gratulatory character,
in religion as in common life, stands out sharp against

1 Romans, VII, 19 f., 24.

38 Psychology of the Religious Life

the humble, self-depreciating form of personality. The two
men who went up into the temple to pray are the lasting
representatives of these opposite forms of character — the
one thanking God for great advance in holiness, the other
standing afar off and not so much as lifting up his eyes while
asking mercy for his failures.

CHAPTER II

BREADTH AND NARROWNESS OF SYMPATHY

THE value which we have in our own eyes is bound in-
timately with our feelings toward our kind. And
yet in no simple way ; for with some men, self-love and a
disregard of their fellows are but the inner and the outer
border of the same mental fact. With others, the apprecia-
tion of themselves first teaches them the worth of men ;
while with still others, it is only from the rich attributes
which they prize in their associates that they come to see
themselves as having worth. One may thus have an opposite
attitude toward his neighbour and toward himself, or there
may be no such contrariety in the feelings with which he
looks inward and without.

In passing from self-regard onward to the sympathies,
we come closer to religion's citadel and life. For reverence
is, by its very nature, a bond which unites man to powers
which lie more central to the world. And this is true, not
alone where there is good-will and confidence between
divinities and men, but even where the suppliant is fearful
and desires most of all to soften the anger of his gods. For
anger, like love (though in an infinitely less degree), is a
mark of recognition, and testifies to the presence of a mutual
concern. But we are to attend now to the feelings which
religion arouses or hopes to incite in its followers, not to-
ward the unseen world itself, but toward men. And we
shall find that, both in the person by himself and in the
larger groups of men, religion sanctions and produces oppo-
site results. The fruit at one time is love toward all men ;
while again, sympathy is checked and chilled.

39

4O Psychology of the Religious Life

Extreme instances of the narrowing of fellow-feeling are
found in those whose worship drives them into lasting
solitude. The eremites, whose lonely existence in the wilder-
ness religious history so often relates, cannot endure the
society of men. All human intercourse is felt to be a hind-
rance to that true companionship for which they long. And
since to them it seems that God alone is the worthy com-
panion of the soul, they shake the dust of cities from their
feet, and flee to him. In their far-off cave or forest fastness
they find a freedom of the spirit from which the common
ties of life would for ever cut them off.

A limitation of the social feelings after a like manner, but
of less degree, is found where men betake themselves to
some small company of kindred minds. The monastery,
the house of nuns, gains its support in many ways ; but
through all the motives which create it, whether in Christian
or in Buddhist lands, there is the feeling that the common
social ties are a fetter to the soul. There is a rejection of plain
humanity with all its mundane interests and aims. The call
to come out from among them may be heeded with the
thought that the separation will help even those who are left
behind ; that it will set a high example which will correct
their inner life even where there can be no outward copying.
Especially where the monks, as with the ' little brothers '
of St. Francis, have been given to deeds of mercy outside
the cloister walls, there has been no utter death of in-
terest in men. But too often there is scant sympathy
with the outer world ; the renunciation in the case of many
is rather a flight from a life polluted, and the monastery
is expected to bring freedom and rest, in contrast with
the ways of common men, and especially with the distrac-
tions of the family. ' Full of hindrances is household life,
a path defiled by passion," says the Lord Gotama ; " free
as the air is the life of him who has renounced all worldly
things. How difficult is it for the man who dwells at home to
live the higher life in all its fulness, in all its purity, in all its
bright perfection ! Let me then cut off my hair and beard,

Breadth and Narroivness of Sympathy 4 1

let me clothe myself in the orange-coloured robes, and let
me go forth from a household life into the homeless state ! "*
In another mood, more given to strained reasoning, it is
not so much the practical hindrances of the home which
require one to leave it, as it is its failure to imitate the
isolation of the god. Brahman is free from household cares,
and the disciple must be like Him in freedom from house-
hold cares, if he would become united with Him.2

The feeling that only those of like faith and of like con-
duct are fit companions for the soul has doubtless existed
in all religious bodies that have been smaller than the
whole secular society and have had special tests for mem-
bership and special marks of separation, or distinction.
Often, as among savage tribes, the religious and the civil
society are of like extent. And yet frequently even here
are secret organizations of a semi-religious strain, of which
the associations called the Nda and Njembe (the latter a
women's club) among the negroes of Southern Guinea may
serve as specific examples.3 Doubtless such bodies, like
' fraternities ' in college, or the Masonic order, heighten the
sympathy between those who are fellow-members, and tend
to lower it toward those without the pale. The social bond
has here been given depth, but at the cost of breadth.
Such an effect does perhaps sometimes come from member-
ship in the visible church in Christendom. And yet this
trend is met, and in many cases overcome, by reason of the
ideal there existent to receive all men in fellowship.

In respect to the range of sympathy, Christianity might
be contrasted with the religion of the Jews. In spite of the
intolerance that has disgraced the disciples of the Nazarene,
they have in general felt themselves more kindred to the
rest of men and less a people set apart than have the Hebrews.
The Jews have received aliens into their communion, but

1 Tevigga Sutta, I, 47 (XI, 187 f.).

2 Ibid., II, 6 f. (XI, 202).

3 Wilson: Western Africa, 1856, pp. 395 ff. ; cf. Boas: "Secret
Societies of the Kwakiutl Indians," Report of the National Museum for
1895 (publ. 1897), p. 311.

42 Psychology of the Religious Life

they seem never to have been marked by a burning desire
to take others to their hearts. This peculiar defect of
sympathy has been at the root of their estrangement from
the Gentile world ; they have held aloof, and others have
inevitably held back from them. This barrier which cannot
be passed, even when there is a will on both sides to cheat
the fates, has its deep element of pathos. But it is idle to
believe that the isolation of the Jews is entirely a result of
their rejection of the Gospel. The Romans hated the Jew
long before any loyalty to the Christ could help to stir their
feeling.

In tracing farther the forms in which the breadth or nar-
rowness of sympathy is revealed, it would be well to dis-
tinguish love and pity. Love of others lies deep within the
ideal, if not the constant practice, of Christianity. And it
also lies deep in the faith of Buddha. The true disciple lets
his mind pervade the four quarters of the world with
thoughts of love. " And thus the whole wide world, above,
below, around, and everywhere, does he continue to pervade
with heart of Love, far-reaching, grown great and beyond
measure. Just, Vase#ha, as a mighty trumpeter makes
himself heard — and that without difficulty — in all the four
directions ; even so of all things that have shape or life
there is not one that he passes by or leaves aside, but re-
gards them all with mind set free, and deep-felt love."1
But in all this sympathy, sadness sounds its minor chord.
The suffering of men — who, bound to the wheel of life,
must even in the heaven of the gods endure a doom of
sorrow — darkens all the view. Pity, rather than love, is
here the recurrent note. For there is this difference be-
tween the two : that into the sympathy which goes with
each, there is mingled in the one case high regard and joy,
and in the other a sense of worth now lost, an element of
tragedy.

The distinction is more than a mere nicety of language.

1 Tevig-ga Sutta, III, i f. (XI, 201); cf. Maha-Sudassana Sutta, II,
8 (XI, 272 f.).

Breadth and Narrowness of Sympathy 43

It is of practical moment, in that it indicates 2? difference
of effect which religious sympathy may have on others, and
helps to show the rank in which we place them and ourselves.
Pity of the heathen, rather than love of the heathen, is
what a Japanese observer, Uchimura, resented in the
sermons he heard in America on the subject of foreign
missions. On one occasion he and some of his countrymen
spoke in another vein, praising the noble traits of the
Japanese as a motive for Christian effort. But this, he tells
us, was not received with approval : " ' If your people are
so fine a set of people ' " — so he reports our brethren's com-
ment— " ' why, there is no need of sending them mission-
aries.' " The fact is," he goes on to say, " if we heathen
are but slightly better than gibbons or chimpanzees, the
Christians may give up their mission works as total failures.
It is because we know something of Right and Wrong,
Truth and Falsehood, that we are readily brought to the
cross of Christ. I sincerely believe that the Christian mis-
sion based upon no higher motive than ' pity for heathens '
may have its support entirely withdrawn without much
detriment either to the sender or to the sent."1

But the work of the missionary, so easy to criticize and
so delicate to perform, does yet in some measure indicate
an interest in one's fellows that goes beyond the special
people or the special faith to which one happens to belong.
It is for the student, therefore, of peculiar value as an index
to the range of social feeling. The missionary impulse is
not confined to Christianity, although this religion has
bridged wide gulfs in its effort to convert the world ; it
has carried its message with deliberate purpose to widely
diverse races. In this respect it has almost from the be-
ginning expressed the difference, to which I have already
referred, between itself and that Judaism within which it
began its life. The conviction of Paul that the Gospel was
for all mankind — for Jew and Gentile, Greek and Barbarian,
bond and free — did such violence to the feeling of his own

1 Diary of a Japanese Convert, [1895], pp. 149 f.

44 Psychology of the Religious Life

people, that we need not wonder at the opposition he
aroused, and at the narrow escape from an almost fatal
schism in the early church. Paul's life is a telling instance
of sympathy at first but limited, and then expanding until
it could include the endlessly varied peoples to which his
distant journeys took him. He was, among the disciples,
the first to show in his own person the immense difference
between religious exclusiveness and an insight into the
eternal worth of men.

But the value which human society has for the religious
mind is shown in other ways than by its attitude toward
missions. The form which the future life assumes to the
eye of faith has already been referred to as a sign of one's
feeling toward one's self. But it is more than this ; it is
an index to the character of the feeling toward one's fellows.
When the picture of the far-off divine event is but faintly
suggestive of any continuance of a true human society, it
must seem that he who draws the picture does not feel that
an association with men is part of the very texture of the
spiritual life. A people for whom the ideal world is not
ideal unless there be in it warm human comradeship, will
soon or late trace the outline of such a thought upon the
heavens.

The Sheol of the Jews gives the picture of a life in which
there is little consolation from the presence of other men.
It is at times regarded as a state of complete, or almost
complete, unconsciousness : " There is no work, nor device,
nor knowledge, nor wisdom, in Sheol whither thou goest."
But where, in another vein, the land of death is one of
life and thought, the kings and counsellors of the earth
who are there regard themselves with pity. They greet
the one who comes, with the words : " Art thou also be-
come weak as we ? Art thou become like unto us ? "2
Much of the religious imagery of India, while showing a
sad cheer in many ways, is also far from social. The wished-
for end is either an absolute passing away, or else is identity

1 Ecclesiastes, IX, 10. a Isaiah, XIV, 10.

Breadth and Narrowness of Sympathy 45

with God. The silence with regard to the presence of one's
fellows, in the thought of bliss, is but a carrying out in the
eternal realm of that attitude of mind which leads to soli-
tude and hermitage here on earth. ' Once more listen to my
excellent words, most mysterious of all," says the god to
Arguna ; " Strongly I like you, therefore I will declare
what is for your welfare. On me place your mind, become
my devotee, sacrifice to me, reverence me, you will cer-
tainly come to me. I declare to you truly, you are dear
to me. Forsaking all duties, come to me as your sole refuge.
I will release you from all sins. Be not grieved."1 The
consolation is here made to be an intimate life with God,
with no perfecting of one's relations with his fellows. In
so far then, all religion that is so exclusively theistic in its
interest has in it a tincture of unmorality. And if one's
absorption in the Ideal thus leaves no thought of men, it
is but a further step to the point where it leaves no thought
even of God, and one's consolation is sought in no associa-
tion whatever, but solely in the self. The human heart
in Vishnuism, as given in the statement just above, is not
inconsolable if shut off eternally from intercourse with
other human souls. The human heart in Buddhism is not
inconsolable even though shut off eternally from God. The
desire to enter the company of the Thirty-Three, and even
of Brahman, is regarded as but a mark of imperfection.

In other religions we have the very opposite feeling for
society. The Greek, in his picture of the Elysian fields,
made the happiness of the blest to consist largely in the
free intercourse of men, in the conversation so dear to the
Greek. In this respect it had its likeness to the Teutonic
idea of bliss, where in Valhalla there is an inconsumable
plenty of boar's flesh and mead, but (best of all) stout
friction with one's kind in a daily battle.2 Stevenson's droll
notion of heaven as a place where we could all, at last, be

1 Bhagavadgita, XVIII (VIII, 129).

* Edda " Gylfaginning," §§ 38 ff. (in Simrock : Die Edda, 1878,
pp. 273 ff.).

46 Psychology of the Religious Life

pirates, was no less dependent on humanity for its joy. So,
too, the Paradise of Islam, although making prominent the
physical luxury of the saved, does not quite overlook their
pleasure in human companionship. Besides the celestial
gardens in which rivers flow — rivers of pure water and
milk and honey and wine (wine that brings neither head-
ache nor drunkenness !), with gushing springs and the cool
shade of trees laden with luscious fruit, and golden brace-
lets and green robes of silk and of brocade — in addition to
such dream-desires of the trader and the parched desert-
caravan — there was a recognition of companionship that
did not stop with large-eyed maids ; all ill-will was to
disappear, and as brethren the blessed were to lie on couches
face to face.1 Into the gardens of Eden the faithful are to
enter " with the righteous among the fathers and their
wives and their seed ; and the angels shall enter in unto
them from every gate : ' Peace be unto you ! for that ye
were patient ; and goodly is the recompense of the abode.' "2
And even in their joy, their thought still goes back to those
on earth : " Count not those who are killed in the way of
God as dead," commands the Prophet, " but living with
their Lord — provided for, rejoicing in what God has brought
them of His grace, and being glad for those who have not
reached them yet — those left behind."3 The Mohammedan
paradise thus confirms the tie between man and God, and
between man and at least his own kin.

The hold of human as well as divine companionship upon
the affections is no less clearly shown in Christianity, in
its picture of Heaven. The ' Revelation of St. John ' makes

1 Koran, passim ; see esp. chs. LV, XLVII, XXXV.

2 Ibid., XIII (VI, 235). This passage and the accompanying citations
from the Koran seem hardly compatible with a recent statement by the
Earl of Cromer (Modern Egypt, 1908, II, 145). After saying that the
Christian has the hope of meeting in heaven those with whom he has been
associated in this world, he adds : " The Moslem's belief in immortality is
dissociated from any ideas of this nature." Quite apart from this, it might
be said that the ancient Egyptian looked forward to some kind of relation
with his kin after death. See Book of the Dead, XCVIII, 10 f. ; LII.
6 f. ; LXV, 2 f. ; CI, rubric ; CX, 39, and the vignettes : CLXXXIX, 7 f.

3 Ibid., Ill (VI, 67).

Breadth and Narrowness of Sympathy 47

the perfect condition of man an idealized city-life : a new
Jerusalem descending from the heavens becomes typical of
the glories of the redeemed. The relation of the solitary
soul to God does not so fill the mind that nothing else finds
place or value. The Church, the great body of men united
in the one faith, is the Bride of Christ ; and there is con-
sequently a union of the divine with human society. For
the main body of Christians, the true religious relation has
ever since remained a tie not alone of the worshipper to the
divinity, but of human beings as well to one another. The
' City of God ' was the great figure used by Augustine, and
the Church of Rome has repeatedly deterred men from the
hope of salvation except as they remained in communion
and communication with the spiritual society of men.
Even the mystics, in whom social feeling is apt to be weak,
cannot in Christianity well escape the strong humanistic
trend. The Monk of Evesham saw heaven as a vast con-
course of redeemed men and of angels.1 And in the imagery
of Swedenborg, the presence of that eternal Sun which gives
its light and heat to all the heavens is no more real than is
the association of men with one another in the spiritual
world. Spirits depend on one another for their intelligence
and power of speech. There was a certain spirit, we are
told, who believed, as many men do, " that he thought
from himself, thus without any extension out of himself and
communication thereby with societies which are without
him. That he might know that he was in a false persuasion,
communication with neighbouring societies was taken away
from him ; whereby he was not only deprived of thought,
but also fell down as if dead, yet tossed about his arms as
a new-born infant ; after a while the communication was
restored to him, and, by degrees, as it was restored, he
returned into the state of his own thought."2 No modern
psychologist with his insistence on imitation and the social

1 The Revelation to the Monk of Evesham, 1196, ed. Arber, 1895, pp.
107 ff. Fra Angelico's pictures of the heavenly company will suggest
themselves to everybody's mind.

2 Swedenborg : Heaven and the World of Spirits, and Hell, § 203.

48 Psychology of the Religious Life

consciousness could give stronger expression to the mind's
dependence on society.

It is perhaps true that the degree of sympathy which
prevails in a religious body influences also the idea of future
punishment. Those who consign a large portion of their
fellow-men to endless torment would seem to be less regard-
ful or appreciative of them than are those who see all crea-
tures on their way to bliss. There unquestionably are
other motives as well — the sense of wrong and of needed
retribution. But a primary heartlessness in many men
makes them take a kind of pleasure in witnessing or imagin-
ing pain in others. The cold interest of children in the
suffering of a playmate, the rush of the street to look upon
an injury to life or limb, have possibly some distant con-
nection with the rank growth of the idea of hell's torment.
With early peoples it is often developed far in excess of
the notion of future joy. In the Kalevala there are elaborate
accounts of the dark Kingdom of Tuoni :

" There, the home of all the wicked.
There the couch of the unworthy,
There the chambers of the guilty.
Underneath Manala's fire-rock
Are their ever-flaming couches,
For their pillows hissing serpents,
Vipers green their writhing covers,
For their drink the blood of adders." 1

But there is a bare mention of the Islands of the Blest.2
And in the Koran, more of real and ingenious imagination
seems to have been expended upon the tortures of the
damned than upon the delights of those in Paradise. The
wicked are to have only the foul thorn to eat,3 or the fruit
of the bitter tree Ez Zaqqum : " Verily it is a tree that
comes forth from the bottom of hell ; its spathe is as it
were the heads of devils ; verily, they shall eat therefrom,
and fill their bellies therefrom. Then shall they have upon

1 Kalevala, Rune XVI (Crawford, 238).

2 Ibid., Rune XXIX (Crawford, 478).

3 Koran, LXXXVIII (IX, 329).

Breadth and Narrowness of Sympathy 49

it a mixture of boiling water "J — boiling water of which they
shall drink as drinks the thirsty camel ; water like molten
brass that shall rend their bowels asunder. In sheets of
fire they shall broil — fire for which the sinner's own wife
shall bring the faggots ;2 and " whenever their skins are
well done, then we will change them for other skins, that
they may taste the torment."3 With these and other
devices that even an unsqueamish reader would rather
not have set down, the unbelievers will spend eternity.
Into Hell the damned shall pour by seven gates, they and
the hosts of Iblis all together.4 And they shall cry to Malik,
the keeper of Hell, " ' O Malik ! let thy lord make an end
of us ' ; and he shall say, ' Verily, ye are to tarry here.' "5

As I have said before, the sense of justice is only in part
the motive for such imaginings of hell.6 The moral sense is
here stoutly seconded by the cruel fascination of suffering,
by the primitive instinct for torture. Nor is this incom-
patible with strong bands of attachment ; indeed where
sympathy toward some is strongest, there is often found
the most violent antipathy toward others, as highest tides
bring lowest ebbs.

But with the growth of humane sentiment there is,
sooner or later, a revulsion from the worst features of such
a view of punishment, and the duration if not the intensity
of the agony is diminished. Mohammed himself saw a sect
turn away from his teaching, saying, " the fire shall not
touch us save for a certain number of days."7 The Mahayan-
ist division of the Buddhists believe that men more in
number than the sands of sixty Ganges rivers — believe,
indeed, that all creatures are destined to be Bodhisattvas,
destined to tread the path that leads to the blessed peace8 —
a judgment which seems the bolder when we think of the
barriers of caste through which it breaks. In Christianity,

1 Koran, XXXVII (IX, 170).

2 Ibid., CXI (IX, 344). 3 Ibid., IV (VI, 80).

4 Ibid., XV, XXVI, XXXII (VI, 247 ; IX, 94, 136).

5 Ibid., XLIII (IX, 217). 6 See p. 15. ' Koran, III (VI. 49).
8 Saddharma-Puwdarika, tr. Kern, XIV, XV (XXI, 281 ff., 303).

E

50 Psychology of the Religious Life

too, the universalists are more numerous than the special
body that gives itself that name. And even among those
who would hardly formulate their belief as favouring the
salvation of all, there is a growing hesitation in affirming a
positive belief in eternal punishment. This change in the
informal, or unofficial, creed of Christendom may well be
due in part to the growing sense of kinship with men of
different nationalities and different religious faiths. We
admire the capacity of the Japanese ; we send aid to
sufferers in China or Chile or Russia. Where such a feeling
grows, it is but natural that men should be less ready to
pass eternal condemnation. It goes with the gradual
narrowing of the occasions for capital punishment by
statute law. Where mere indifference does not seem to
be at the root ; where it is clear that the moral sense is as
keen as ever ; the decline of the belief in eternal damnation
may be counted a sign of an enlargement of the mutual
regard of men.

It seems strange that the strong social features of Chris-
tianity should not have prevented its Protestant branch
from taking the stand it has on another matter connected
with the future life, namely a closer connection be-
tween the living and the dead. Prayers for the dead, so
congenial to Catholicism, are in keeping with its genius
for large grouping, for overpassing immense diversities of
blood and colour and social condition. But for both the
dead and the living to be still within the one Church, and
still subject to like restraints and like dispensations of the
one organization — this does not tone in so well with the
greater individualism of the Protestant. His is a more
solitary faith, and inclines to separate him, not alone from
those who have tasted death, but even from the living.
But there is an unchilled minority whose feeling is ex-
pressed by the kindly Sir Thomas Browne when he speaks
of that third heresy " which I did never positively maintain
or practise, but have often wished it had been consonant
to Truth, and not offensive to my Religion, and that is,

Breadth and Narrowness of Sympathy 5 1

the Prayer for the Dead." Here speaks the more primitive
impulse, and the Catholic Church has but maintained un-
changed some of that feeling which inspired the older
Rome, when it believed that the spirits of ancestors were
closely bound in all that pertained to piety. In this, Rome
was like Athens, like India, like China, and all the great
company of peoples who believe that death does not end
nor essentially weaken the family tie. The Siamese, the
Japanese, welcome with ceremony the departed spirits who
return to visit them. Men of Fiji, of Celebes, of Luzon,
and of many other lands make offerings of the first fruits
to the spirits of the dead, or express in other ways the
sense of their intimacy.1 While fear or self-interest often
enters into such solemnities, yet in many cases there is
evidence of filial attachment and a desire to benefit the
dead. A reason given by Arguna for stopping fraternal
strife and battle is, that ancestors are dependent on the
living, and if the family by quarrelling cuts itself off, the
proper rites for the dead cease and the forefathers then
fall down to hell. The cult of ancestors is here thought of
as of benefit chiefly to them, rather than to the living.2

The strong humanism of the ancient Persians' faith is
shown by their making the spirits of men the final restorers
of plenty and righteousness on earth. They looked to one
man in particular, a son of Zarathustra, to be born in the
distant future and to upbuild the fallen world. He is to
be the great Saoshyant, the Beneficent One ; but all the
faithful among the dead are, in their own degree, like him
and are called Saoshyants, allies of the Benefactor. And
even the present maintenance of the world is due to the
watchfulness of these human spirits. The faithful souls of
the men of all nations maintain the sky, the water, the
earth, the cattle, the child in the womb.3 That charge

1 Frazer : Golden Bough, 1900, II, 460 ft". ; III, 85 ff. ; Tylor : Primi-
tive Culture, 1903, II, 31 £f.

2 Bhagavadgita, I (VIII, 41).

3 Zend-Avesta, Farvardin Yast, I, 17; II, 21 f . ; Srosh Yast Had-
hokht, V, 22 (XXIII, 184, 185, 167 ; note p. 271).

52 Psychology of the Religious Life

which in the Hebrew hymn is committed to the angels to
watch over men, and bear them up lest they dash their foot
against a stone,1 is here assigned unambiguously to spirits
who once were men. These sustain both animate and
inanimate creation, thus bearing constant witness that
men are worthy of having entrusted to them some of the
responsibilities of gods. The fire of human fellowship
gleams from the other world to this, and adds its kindly
light.

But these are not the only indications of a difference of
sympathy in religion. The very size of the sect, where sects
exist, is an evidence — though not to be used with mathe-
matical precision — of the strength or weakness of the
human bond. No sect, and indeed no religious body, could
well become large without the beginnings of some catholic
impulsion. The Parsee was not limited in his religious
appreciation to those of his own blood or to his political
friends. Even among the foe, even among the kith and
tribes of the Turanian, he believed that piety was to be
found ; and thither, as well as to the saints of his own
people, the Aryan looked with reverence. " We worship
the Fravashis of the holy men in the Aryan countries. We
worship the Fravashis of the holy men in the Turanian
countries," declares the ritual song.2 With a spirit like
this to breast the current of native suspicion toward those
of another blood, it is possible, unless something else hinders,
for a creed to press on to foreign lands. Buddhism, with
its sorrow for all men and all things that must endure the
weight of life, is by this sympathetic pity well fitted to
spread among people who are already given to such sombre
thoughts. It is also in keeping with Islam's wide sway,
although perhaps not the major part of the cause of this,
that at the very beginning the Prophet feels a mission that
is not confined even to men. The jinns of the spirit world

1 Psalm XCI, 1 1 ff .

2 Zend-Avesta. Gathas, XLVI, 12 (XXXI, 141); Farvardin Yast,
XXX, 143 (XXIII, 226) condensed.

Breadth and Narrowness of Sympathy 53

are seen to listen to the Koran, and many become faithful
Muslims.1 And Mohammed feels that his own prophetic
office is the true succession and fulfilment of the work of
the prophets of Judaism and Christianity.

Among the sects of Christendom, the Roman Church, by
its breadth of sympathy for rich as well as poor, for the
learned and the ignorant, by its feeling that it is not of
this or that particular nation, has been effective in many
lands. It has, judged in the large, been catholic in senti-
ment, as well as in name. Especially if we look to the sects
in America (the great field for freedom of religious associa-
tion), we find the largest numbers in the Catholic and the
Methodist churches, the churches in which there has un-
doubtedly been in large measure an earnest and active
appreciation of plain and common humanity. In contrast
with these, stand the reserved and uncordial sects which
have issued from the frozen loins of the New England
Puritans. The Congregational churches, both Trinitarian
and Unitarian, for all the service they give of light, if not of
warmth, seem destined to include but few — largely be-
cause deep in their hearts they care for smaller groups and
more select spiritual friendship. But in a land where, for
so many, bigness is the one thing needful, let us greet with
joy anything that willingly remains small.

It is not far from the topic of sects and the size of the
communion to that of religious jealousy and toleration.
Some religions permit their adherents no liberty of par-
taking in other faiths ; there must be a definite, an ex-
clusive choice and fealty. Christianity, Judaism, and
Islam are of this kind. If one profess Christianity, he is
understood to renounce other religions ; and this is true
of the Hebrew and the Arab. On the contrary, Buddhist
and Brahmin, in spite of an occasional bitter word — as
when Gotama calls the three-fold wisdom of the Vedas a
waterless desert, a pathless jungle2 — have been tolerant

1 Koran, LXXII (IX, 304).

2 Tevigga Sutta, I, 39 (XI, 185).

54 Psychology of the Religious Life

and even sympathetic toward each other.1 At the village
of Shabatzgari, north-east of Peshawar, is a rock inscription
said to be the edict of the Emperor Asoka, in the year
256 B.C., that " a man must not do reverence to his own
sect by disparaging that of another man for trivial reasons.
Depreciation should be for adequate reasons only, because
the sects of other people deserve reverence for one reason or
another. By thus acting, a man exalts his own sect, and
at the same time does service to the sects of other people.
For he who does reverence to his own sect, while disparag-
ing all other sects, from a feeling of attachment to his own,
on the supposition that he thus glorifies his own sect, in
reality by such conduct inflicts severe injury on his own
sect."2 And in China, Buddhism, Taoism, and the religion
of Confucius live side by side in amity ; one does not have
to choose, but may take part freely in the ceremonies of
all3 — much as in Japan the peasant enters Buddhist temple
and Shinto shrine with the same reverence and the same
muttered words.4 In Greece and Rome there was also
toleration ; the gods of foreign peoples were admitted to
divine honours,6 somewhat as the various tribes of Arabia,
before the coming of Islam, had their diverse gods all at
the Kaabah at Mecca.

Now while religious jealousy and even persecution have
not been entirely wanting from other religions — for the
Chinese have persecuted Buddhists, and the Buddhists
have had open quarrels among themselves ; while even
Greeks and Romans have inflicted death, from a mixture
of religious and political motives — yet it is the three great
monotheistic religions, Christianity, Judaism, and Moham-
medism, that have been most bitter toward their rivals.
Christians have used the faggot and the rack not only

1 de la Saussaye : Manual, Engl. tr., 1891, p. 622.

a Kosui Otani : " Japanese Pilgrimage to the Buddhist Holy Land,"
Century Magazine, Oct., 1906, N.S., Vol. L, pp. 869 f., condensed.

3 de la Saussaye : Manual, Engl. tr., 1891, p. 374.

* Knox : Development of Religion in Japan, 1907, pp. 92 f.

5 Wissova: Religion und Kultus der Rdmer, 1902, pp. 38 ff. ; cf. Camp-
bell : Religion in Greek Literature, 1898, p. 368.

Breadth and Narrowness of Sympathy 5 5

against Jew and Turk and Moor, but even against dis-
senters within their own religion. The Jews sought out
the early followers of the Christ, as in earlier times they
had put to death the worshippers of Baal.1 And the free
use of the scimitar as a means of religious prophecy has been
one of the causes of the wonderful spread of Islam. Yet
the Koran, with all its fierceness against the opponents of
Mohammed, has its appreciation of those who are not under
his immediate banner. " Every nation has its apostle ; and
when their apostle comes to them, it is decided between
them with justice, and they are not wronged."2 ' Verily,
those who believe and those who are Jews, and the Sabaeans,
and the Christians, whosoever believes in God and the last
day, and does what is right, there is no fear for them, nor
shall they grieve."3 Yet the personal conduct of Mohammed
toward that Jewish tribe which left his side was anything
but clement : he marched against them, and having com-
pelled them to surrender, sold the women and children to
the Bedawin and beheaded 800 men !4 And the more con-
stant call in the Koran is to give battle to those who oppose
the cause : " Kill them wherever you find them, and drive
them out from whence they drive you out ; for sedition is
worse than slaughter. Kill them, for such is the recom-
pense of those who misbelieve."5 " If they retire not from
you, nor offer you peace, nor restrain their hands, then
seize them and kill them wheresoever ye find them."6

The motives for religious persecution are manifold.
Often there is a desire to destroy the enemies of God, and
thus to do him service by fighting his battles for him.
There is often the will to spread the truth by requiring men
to accept it under pain of instant death. And mingled
with incentives such as these, there have too frequently
been political and selfish ends masking in religion's garb.

1 Judges, VI. 31. a Koran, X (VI, 198).

3 Ibid., V (VI, 107) ; cf. II (VI, 8).

4 Palmer : Introd. to Qur'an (VI, p. xxxix).

6 Koran, II (VI, 27), w. omiss. 6 Ibid., IV (VI, 85).

56 Psychology of the Religious Life

As the ingenious contrivance of tortures for the damned
has given an imaginative satisfaction to the savagery of
some, so the persecution of heretics and infidels has, under
a religious gloss, sometimes physically gratified what was
nothing but a wolfish thirst for blood. Toleration, on the
other hand, may come from sheer listlessness, or from a
purely intellectual disapproval of the effort to spread truth
by fear and force, or it may arise from a real breadth of
sympathy — from the feeling that a man's a man for all
his want or waywardness of faith.

But the great monotheistic religions have a heightened
motive to hate and destroy their rivals. Their God brooks
no other gods, and therefore it is impossible to tolerate, in
ordinary logical consistency, the worship of other beings.
Persecution is here a crude attempt to put down a system
that seems absolutely incompatible with the truth. With
polytheism it is far different. Man is here nursed in the
thought that the spiritual world itself is a realm where there
exists among the gods mutual accommodation. The highest
heavens are populous ; and while Athene receives praise
from men, she must see others bring gifts to Apollo. The
Maruts must grow accustomed to have their votary turn
from them to sing a hymn to Agni. After such a schooling
for the religious mind, there seems no serious difficulty in
admitting other objects of reverence, if men are still
unsatisfied. The pantheon is already large, and has always
room for more. When men of such a faith permit others
to worship freely the gods of their own choice, they are
but imitating in some measure the divine nature itself,
as they see it. Polytheism thus has in its bone and sinew
the elements of toleration. The Mohammedan, the most
insistent upon the divine unity — making it full half his
creed — has been the most fanatical of all persecutors.

Religion has thus engendered hatred as well as love ; it
has brought peace and also the sword. Some writers have
dwelt almost entirely on its antagonisms, on its want of
charity for those who differ from its ways. But its disin-

Breadth and Narrowness of Sympathy 57

tegrating force is certainly no more real than its power to
strengthen social ties. Religion, like other human interests,
has had both the loss and the gain that come of organiza-
tion. It is not difficult to appreciate the value of organiza-
tion for the spread and maintenance of religious aims. Only
very few men can keep their fire for spiritual things (or
indeed for any other end) glowing and alive in solitude.
They need the visible proof that others are with them ;
they need tradition, they need direction ; the past and
the present must come to their help in the form of institu-
tions. And wherever it has been of moment to maintain an
institution, it has been at a cost of enmity and even blood-
shed. The great forms of social union have each a fearful
debit beside the good they bring. The family, which binds
husband and wife, brother and brother, parent and child, has
produced an amount of misery that is only exceeded by its
benefits to mankind. The pledge of a man and a woman to
cleave to each other, has, as our later novelists and poets
will not let us forget, often stood in the way of true asso-
ciation; and where its limitations have been disregarded,
society has visited transgression with the gravest penalties.
Moreover, the desire to aggrandize the family has made
men betray all manner of trusts. Rivalry here has brought
endless hatred and feud and vengeance. Yet only hot-
heads would say that the family has made for hostility
rather than for love. And likewise of the political institu-
tion. When one stops to consider how men have been
plotters and thieves and assassins for the sake of govern-
ment ; how exigencies of state have turned brother against
brother, and father against son ; how men have gladly
thrown aside for their sovereign's sake their last shred of
private honour, and have gathered by hosts to drive out
one another's souls with steel and lead — when one counts
the cost of suffering and of physical and moral death at
which the state has been maintained, he can hardly wonder
at those who are for anarchy and who would stamp out
patriotic zeal as the greatest curse that has ever come upon

58 Psychology of the Religious Life

the earth. This is the black history of an institution which
is essentially for peace and order, and upon whose stability
depend the opportunity and means for nearly all the virtu-
ous relations. The very greatest human expression of
fellowship has thus been the greatest occasion of discord. In
view of what these other institutions have cost, it is no
anomaly, although it is no less to be condemned, that man's
loyalty to his faith and to his religious affiliations should
have had its side of conflict and ill-will. But as the family
becomes less and less an incentive to wrong, and as the
state is very slowly learning to maintain itself without so
staggering a moral outlay, so the church is gradually finding
the means of preserving its own integrity without that
bitterness which has marked its earlier life.

We have had in view some of the outward expressions
of religion that are connected with man's feelings for his
kind. The solitary and the monastic life, or the continu-
ance of the ordinary social ties ; the formation of more
inclusive or of more select religious associations ; the eager-
ness to carry the truth to foreign lands, and the confine-
ment of a people's ministrations to kindred and friends ;
the picture of the future life as including or neglecting
human fellowship ; the ferocity or the softening of spiritual
retribution, and the thought that all will come to God ;
the close or broken bond with men who now are dead ; the
spirit of tolerance or of persecution — these point to an
opposition of forces in the religious consciousness. There
is a limiting, a caste spirit both in primitive and in more
advanced religions ; and in contrast with this, an expansive,
outflowing, democratic spirit, typified by those occasions
where all class distinctions are for a time obliterated, as in
the revels at Rome, or in the great festivals of Krishna or
of Holi in India, in which all grades of people meet on
common ground.1

If now we were to seek an explanation of these opposing

1 Oman : Brahmans, Theists, and Muslims of India, 1907, pp. 241 ff. ;
cf. de la Saussaye : Manual, Engl. tr., 1891, p. 652.

Breadth and Narrowness of Sympathy 59

tendencies, we should find the causes partly within the nature
of religion itself. The adoration of the Perfect, whether
more clearly or dimly seen, becomes naturally, it would
appear, both a bond and a barrier between men. It may
tend to such absorption in another realm, that all irruption
of plain human duty seems an affront to the higher life.
Especially in mysticism is there a temptation to forget or
to resent the presence of one's fellows, because the reality
of the spirit makes so sovereign a claim upon the attention.
The common man, busied with eating and drinking, with
house and home, seems a blind lover of the bad, unworthy
to be vouchsafed the heavenly vision, or else too sodden to
be aroused by it. Yet apart from any feeling of superiority,
great experiences may quiet for a while all need of inter-
course, as when climbers on a mountain peak at sunrise
involuntarily draw apart and look in silence. Often too,
with an interest in perfection, there is an intense interest
in one's own spiritual states, whereby the inner life is for
ever being questioned and examined ; this leads likewise
to a neglect of social ties.

But the contemplation of the ideal, for all its tendency
to separate man from his fellows in whom it is so easy to see
much that is unideal, does also tend to draw him back to
them. For when we view our life and that of others as
best we can from the standpoint of eternity, toward which
the ideal soon carries us, the differences of race and rank,
of wealth and culture, which loom so large from earthly
levels, now seem petty and soon to pass away. And since,
with all our selfishness, there is a wide atmosphere of good-
will which mankind in its best moments recognizes as its
breath and life, the commands of heaven soon charge men
in most solemn manner to guard and increase this good-
will. The normal man who has advanced from savagery
finds his religion sanction his morality, morality which is
nothing but regard for others and co-operation with them.
By making men feel that the impulse to acknowledge rights
in others, to work with them and to further their welfare,

60 Psychology of the Religious Life

is the will of heaven, religion is one of the great agents of
human union. It begins with whatever is dominant in us
— self-interest or fear, if generous impulses are still in
infancy — and compels us to recognize through even these
a larger unseen society. And as time goes on and sympathy
widens its circle on earth, it is seen to exist among the gods,
and from them returns to ennoble the intercourse of men,
until religion is felt to be a friendship with the highest,
and human friendship is a symbol and a portion of religion.
Tennyson's In Memoriam, if we lacked for evidence, would
show how close religion is to the honour of a friend. Through-
out history, human sympathy has been a source of revelation,
and religion has helped men to feel their common blood.

But along with the love of love, there goes the hate of
hate. The first form of the battle against suffering and
against the maiming and stunting of one man by another
is a personal assault upon those from whom such wrongs
appear to arise. Gentler means of correction may come
later ; but, for a time, society seems to need an abhorrence
of those who represent the bad. Human nature is thus
provided with antagonism and sympathy, and finds ample
use for both. And if there are so many uses for hostility
and kindness in common social life, it is natural that these
should continue when the circle of companionship widens to
include an unseen world. Thus the narrowing and widening
of sympathy in religion appear to come partly from the vary-
ing development of these different elements of the moral life.

These opposing tendencies are near neighbours to another
contrast found in every mind. The right growth of men
requires that each must be imitative and each must be
original. If we were not to pattern our acts on others,
there would be poor progress ; this could come only from
what was transmitted through the body, eked out by the
little that the individual could discover for himself. With-
out imitation there would be no heirship to the wealth of
custom and language, thought and sentiment, which we
enter into by intercourse with men. But if all imitated only,

Breadth and Narrowness of Sympathy 6 1

and did not also act to some extent originally, each under
a flag of independence, there would be no increase of the
common heritage. No one could contribute to the general
good from the fresh store which each possesses.

Now imitation fosters and is fostered by the kindlier
feelings. We readily copy where we sympathize. Origin-
ality, however, goes with mild antagonism, with some sever-
ing of the social bond. The enlarger of life must assert him-
self against, even when it is for, his kind. And here religion
is of a like quality with purely secular progress. The leaders
of religion have been strong to demolish, as well as to build
up. The attempt to live according to a higher rule requires
both the power to imitate, to appreciate others, and the
power to live alone. Reverence for the ideal thus has
hidden in it the element of harmony with men and the
element of discord.

In this way it is perhaps already clear that the religious
life and its oppositions are but the appearance of conflicting
tendencies which run through human character. The gre-
garious trend and the instinct for isolation are evident in
ordinary life. The Greek had his fine scorn for the world
not Greek. The Athenian, the Spartan, each had some-
thing of this same feeling for Greece outside his little state.
The Egyptians, Herodotus tells us, despised the Greeks — a
feeling which, we well know, the Jews had for the uncir-
cumcized about them. The Roman with all his pride of
citizenship, was better able than any of these to enter
into the life of other people ; this was in part the cause,
in part the fruit, of wide political successes.

But perhaps the best instances of wide and of narrow
sympathy, analogous to the religious, while yet purely
secular in tone, are found in the life of individuals. The
whole-hearted lover of his kind, the man able to feel the
kindred blood in himself and other men, whatever their
colour or place or mode of thought, might be represented
by Stevenson — drinking deep of the wine of fellowship,
whether with the cultivated of Edinburgh, or with emi-

62 Psychology of the Religious Life

grants bound for California, or with the natives of Samoa.
The opposite type may be seen in Thoreau. " I sometimes
reproach myself," he writes in his journal, " because I do
not find anything attractive in certain mere trivial employ-
ments of men — that I skip men so commonly and their
affairs — the professions and the trades — do not elevate
them at least in my thought and get some material for
poetry out of them directly. Why not see men standing in
the sun and casting a shadow, even as trees ? May not
some light be reflected from them as from the stems of
trees ? I will try to enjoy them as animals, at least. They
are perhaps better animals than men." And again : " After
having been perambulating the bounds of the town all the
week, and dealing with the most commonplace and worldly-
minded men, and emphatically trivial things, I feel as if I
had committed suicide in a sense. A fatal coarseness is the
result of mixing in the trivial affairs of men. Though I
have been associating even with the select men of this and
the surrounding towns, I feel inexpressibly begrimed. My
Pegasus has lost his wings ; he has turned a reptile and
gone on his belly. Such things are compatible only with a
cheap and superficial life."1

This is the very feeling which in religion leads to hermitage
or the monastery. But among those who love Nature and
despise men, the human antipathy is backed by an aesthetic
or intellectual yearning for the perfect ; while in the
religious anchorite the support comes from the moral sense :
a life is sought that will shock less the love of purity. The
sensitiveness both to beauty and to holiness is indeed often
at the price of human feeling. And this explains why men
of perception are frequently unable to make a deep impres-
sion on their kind. An impassable gulf lies between the
prophet and his hearers ; while some slight admixture of
the missing element would give him the power to make
his insight live in them.

1 Atlantic Monthly, April, 1905 (Vol. XCV, pp. 545 f.), under dates of
Aug. 23, and Sept. 20, 1851, condensed.

CHAPTER III

THE WORLD ACCEPTED OR RENOUNCED

BESIDES the stir of feeling toward ourselves and our
fellow-men, religion affects, and is affected by, our
attitude toward possessions and pleasures, toward marriage
and government, toward all that hard system of reality
which is often called ' the world.' Allegiance to an unseen
rule cannot fail to leave its impress upon our loyalty to
what is seen ; religion cannot for ever remain a fact apart
and without influence upon the common attractions of life.
These must either be made legitimate, converted to spiritual
use, or in worshipping we must turn our back upon them
as rivals of the highest.

The extremity of the renouncing temper appears in various
forms of asceticism, and is found more widespread than
many know. Indeed, hardly more than a hint can be given
of the wealth of materials that might be used to illustrate
a religious feature such as this. With the Malays, religion
required at times the departure to some solitary place, and
the reduction of the usual allowance of rice ; the Pawang,
or medicine-man, among them practises occasional aus-
terities.1 Among the Abipones of Paraguay, the Zulus,
the Haytians, revelations have been sought by abstaining
from food.2 The ancient Mexicans, too, resorted to long
fasts and to self-imposed suffering, and among them were
those who sought closer communion with the gods by
living solitary in the desert under conditions of severe

1 Skeat : Malay Magic, 1900, pp. 59, 81.

2 Tylor : Primitive Culture, 1903, I, 305, 445, and esp. II, 410 ff.

63

64 Psychology of the Religious Life

privation.1 And with many of the more northern American
Indians, privations of greater or less severity were practised
from religious motive. Among those at the mouth of the
Yellowstone, Catlin found that when a boy was " forming
his medicine " he wandered away from his father's lodge
and absented himself for several days " lying on the ground
in some remote or secluded spot, crying to the Great Spirit
and fasting the whole time."2 A Chippewa legend relates
that, after fasting for twelve days according to his father's
request, an Indian youth was visited by a different spirit
from the one he sought, and was changed into a robin.3
Fasting was included in the ceremonies connected with
entrance into certain religious societies among the Indians,
and was also practised as part of the prayer for success in
war or in hunting, as well as to obtain that special power
or mystery known as ' medicine.'4

To pass to an entirely different quarter of the world and
to a different social situation, the canon of the Confucians
speaks of abstentions and vigils as part of the preparation
for sacrifice, and of regular fasts and vigils in midsummer
and midwinter. At these times " superior men " renounce
not only piquant condiments and bodily activity (which
some among us have not required the urgings of religion to
forego), but more enticing pleasures, including " beautiful
sights ' and music.5 The self-denial among the ancient
Jews is too well known to need a fresh recital — how those
of old obeyed the voice of Jonadab the son of Rechab, and
drank no wine all their days, neither they, their wives, their
sons, nor their daughters ; nor built houses to dwell in,
nor had vineyard nor field nor seed, but dwelt in tents:6
And how he who vowed the vow of a Nazarite must separate
himself from wine and all strong drink, and might not eat

1 Reville : Native Religions of Mexico and Peru, 1884, pp. 99 ff.

2 Catlin : North American Indians, 1842, I, 36.

3 Schoolcraft : Archives of Aboriginal Knowledge, 1860, II, 229 f.

4 Bureau of American Ethnology, Bulletin No. 30, 1907, I, 453 f.

6 Lt A'i, IV, 2, 2, 15 (XXVII, 275); IV, 4, 2, 13 (XXVII, 304 i ) ;
VIII, 2, 7 (XXVII, 407), Legge's tr.
8 Jeremiah, XXXV, 8 ff.

The World Accepted or Renounced 65

even grapes moist or dried, and no razor should come upon
his head : J and how the Baptist John had raiment of
camel's hair, and was girt with leather, and his food was
locusts and wild honey.2

But in India and in the lands that have come under its
religious influence we find such practices so powerfully
developed and at so early a time, that some have thought
(though perhaps without sufficient warrant) that Christian
monasticism there had its origin. The Brahmin anchorites,
the Vana-prasthas, living in extreme austerity in the
jungle,3 were known to the ancient Greeks as the naked
philosophers, ' gymnosophists.' And the later religion, of
the Jains,4 retained a strong ascetic bent. Indeed, the
impulse to regard austerity as essential to religion is here
evident even in the popular Indian religions, which are given
at stated periods to some privation.6

And with all its recommendation of a moderate course,
much of Buddhism would seem austere according to our
standards. Family life was not for the saint ; the brethren
of the monastery were to live by alms and to hold all gifts
in common. The founder himself renounced his princely
heritage and became for a time a dweller in the wilderness.
It did not seem in keeping with the highest piety to carry
a handsome walking-stick or umbrella, or to use embroidered
counterpanes or fleecy carpets, or to play marbles, to use
the " board of sixty-four squares," or to play hop-scotch
or jack-straws, or to watch reviews of troops.6 Indeed, one
must be set free from all attachment, from all longing,
especially for earthly goods. " How then, O King, shall I
address thee ? " asks his queen, of the Great King of Glory.
" Thus, O Queen, shouldst thou address me : The nature
of all things near and dear to us, O King, is such that we

1 Numbers, VI, 2 S. * Matthew, III, 4.

3 Dubois : Hindu Manners, Customs, and Ceremonies, tr. Beauchamp,
1897, pp. 163 f., 507 ff., 525 ff.

4 Cf. the description of the " naked penitents " of the Jains, in Dubois,
op. cit., pp. 702 f.

6 de la Saussaye : Manual, 1891, p. 667.
« Tevigga Sutta, II (XI, 192-200).

66 Psychology of the Religious Life

must leave them, divide ourselves from them, separate our-
selves from them. Pass not away, O King, with longing in
thy heart. Sad is the death of him who longs, unworthy is
the death of him who longs. Thine, O King, are these four
and eighty thousand cities, the chief of which is the royal
city Kusavati. Cast away desire for these ! long not after
life ! ' And then there passes before his eye his endless
possessions — his four and eighty thousand palaces, his divans
of gold and silver and ivory, his stately elephants with
trappings of gold — and with each there sounds the solemn
refrain, " Cast away desire for these ! long not after life ! "J

If one were to follow the vagaries of religious self-denial,
he would have at least to mention those odd dilutions of
askesis where fish is substituted for flesh on Friday, or
where for a season fashionable ladies refrain from attending
balls. From such faint and border instances, renunciation
passes out into clear absurdity, as where for religion's sake
a man gives up his beloved reading of Greek, 2 or where the
sect of the ' Abecedarians ' condemns a knowledge even of
the alphabet, since all human learning, of which the alphabet
is the foundation, is felt to be a hindrance to the progress
of the soul.3

With this, let us pass to the opposite attitude, that of an
acceptance of the world.

The feeling that whatever is in accord with plain morality
may be freely used and enjoyed is found in the ancient
Egyptian, the Greek, the Roman. The Egyptian especially
was no mere worldling, for the life beyond death was recog-
nized by him in all its solemn claim, as is shown by his great
care for his soul's welfare and for the service of the gods.
But for him, as for the Greek and the Roman, the goods of
heaven did not seem to require a surrender of the goods of
earth. The gifts of the gods were to be added to the bless-
ings of this present life, rather than to be obtained by re-

1 MaM-Sudassana Sutta, II, 31 fif. (XI, 280 ff.).

a See a case reported by Davenport : Primitive Traits in Religions
Revivals, 1905, p. 285.

3 Blunt : Dictionary of Sects, Heresies, etc., art. ' Abecedarians.'

The World Accepted or Renounced 67

fusing these. And while we find among the Greeks the
thought that heaven is jealous of earthly prosperity, yet
such jealousy occurred, for the most part, only when the
prosperity became unnatural and excessive.

Still on the acceptant side, but far less undividedly so,
is the religion of Islam. ' O sons of Adam ! ' ' says the
Koran, wear " your ornaments to every mosque ; and eat
and drink, but do not be extravagant, for He loves not the
extravagant."1 "O ye who do believe!" it says again,
" eat of the good things wherewith we have provided you,
and give thanks unto God if it be Him ye serve. He has
only forbidden for you what is dead, and blood, and flesh
of swine, and whatsoever has been consecrated to other
than God ; but he who is forced, neither revolting nor
transgressing, it is no sin for him ; verily, God is forgiving
and merciful."2 In regard to intoxicating drink and a
curious gambling called el mdisar, this judicial opinion is
handed down : "In them both is sin and profit to men ;
but the sin of both is greater than the profit of the same."3
Yet in Paradise, the wine denied in this world is to flow
in veritable rivers. Islam has its rigid fasts, especially in
the sacred month Ramadan, wherein the Koran was re-
vealed ;4 and worldly enjoyment is tempered by the thought
that " the life of this world is but a possession of deceit,"
that men are not to strain for " the flourish of the life of this
world " — the life of this world which is " nothing but a
sport and a play." The next life is the real life ; only in
Paradise is real happiness to be found.5 Checkered as the
record stands with such a puritanic strain — a strain which,
it is said, the desert sect of the Snussi, or Senoussi, in Africa,
have developed with some rigour6 — Islam in its canon may
be said to present the acceptant strain only a little stronger
than the renouncing.

1 Koran, VII (VI, 140). 2 Ibid., II (VI, 24).

3 Ibid., II (VI, 32). * Ibid., II (VI, 26, 28).

5 Ibid., Ill, XX, XXIX (VI, 69 ; IX, 45, 124).

6 Reclus : art. " Senoussi," in La grande encyclopedic ; de la Saussaye :
Manual, Engl. tr., 1891, p. 266 ; Cromer : Modem Egypt, 1908, II, 38 f.

68 Psychology of the Religious Life

Less of this restrictive temper so strong in Mohammedism,
and more of a spirit like the Greek, appears as we pass to a
people that in many ways have seemed of a character
opposite to the Greek — their foes of Persia. Yet here again
as with the Arab, and indeed as with every great develop-
ment of religion, there was an ascetic element. In the
Zend-Avesta the faithful are required, in making libations
to Mithra, " the lord of wide pastures," to wash their bodies
three days and three nights, and undergo thirty stripes ;
to wash their bodies two days and two nights, and undergo
twenty stripes.1 But this is far from the prevalent spirit
of the worship. Mazdaism is generally unrenouncing. Life
is pronounced to be the greatest good, greater even than
purity.2 Zarathustra prays that King Vistaspa may be
long-lived, as long-lived as an old man can be ; and that
he may fulfil the duration of a thousand years ere he comes
to the all-happy blissful abode of the holy Ones.3 Here is
no yearning for release, no complaint of the weary burden
of existence ! Spiritual benefits and the blessings of common
life are permitted to mingle in gay confusion : " The first
place where the earth feels most happy ' is where the
faithful stand prepared to sacrifice and pray to Mithra and
Rama #flastra. The second place of greatest happiness is
that " whereon one of the faithful erects a house with a
priest within, with cattle, with a wife, with children, and
good herds within ; and wherein afterwards the cattle go
on thriving, holiness is thriving, fodder is thriving, the dog
is thriving, the wife is thriving," child, fire, every blessing
of life is thriving.4 Nor was this acceptance naive and un-
reflecting. The opposite ideal was consciously rejected :
" Verily I say unto thee, O Spitama Zarathustra ! the man
who has a wife is far above him who begets no sons ; he
who keeps a house is far above him who has none ; he who
has children is far above the childless man ; he who has
riches is far above him who has none. And of two men,

1 Mihk Yast, 121 f. (XXIII, 151). 2 Vendidad, V, 21 (IV, 55).
3 Vistasp Yast, 4, 5 (XXIII, 329). « Vendidad, III, 1-3 (IV, 23).

The World Accepted or Renounced 69

he who fills himself with meat is filled with the good spirit
much more than he who does not do so ; the latter is all
but dead."1 Apparently, one of the worst things that can
be said against the ' ungodly Ashemaogha ' is, that he
does not eat !z It is significant that a conquering nation
like that ruled by Cyrus and Darius and Xerxes should
thus in its great religious canon praise the rugged materials
of warrior strength.

The religion of Zarathustra, however, but shows the same
spirit which appears also in a kindred faith. In the Rig-
Veda, prayer is at times for sinlessness, for something like
spiritual companionship, and for immortality ;3 but this
does not exclude a love of earthly good. The sacred hymns
express a desire for increase of offspring, for long life.4
' Help us to good, resplendent, abundant wealth which is
accompanied by offspring, by good progeny."6 Wealth and
strength are prayed for, almost as by some head of a modern
' trust ' : " Bring this wealth to us, O powerful Agni, to
these our men. May he give us dwelling ; may he give us
prosperity ; may he help us in winning booty. And help
us to grow strong in fights ! "6 Even horse-racing, which
some in our day have not placed high among the aids to piety,
is sanctioned by this unascetic faith.7 Thus a religion which
felt so little conflict between the world and the spirit is
historically kindred both to the world-acceptance of the
Parsee religion and to the world-renunciation so strong in
India. Yet even in much of Indian religion there is a
desire to temper asceticism with a certain prudence. The
Brahmin hermitage, with all its severity, had this important
softening : it was not a form of life commended for all
one's years, but only after the fulfilment of the three great
duties of the Brahmin — his duty to the .Zfo'shis, whose

1 Vendidad, IV, 47, 48 (IV, 46). 2 Ibid., IV, 49 (IV, 47).

3 Vedic Hymns, I, 94, 15 (XLVI, no).

* Ibid., HI, i, 22 (XLVI, 222) ; V, 55, 4 (XXXII, 333).

5 Ibid., II, 2, 12 (XLVI, 194), Oldenberg's tr. ; cf. II, 33, i f. (XXXII,
426 f.).

6 Ibid.. V, 9, 7 (XLVI, 387) ; cf. V, 54, 13 (XXXII, 326).

" Ibid., I, 27, 7 and 9 (XLVI, 16), and II, 2, 10 (XLVI, 194).

70 Psychology of the Religious Life

hymns he must transmit ; to the Pitns, for whose sake he
must have offspring to perpetuate the ancestral sacrifices ;
and to the gods, by performing for them their appropriate
rites. Such renunciation thus had a slightly different tone
from that of mediaeval Europe ; it comes only after obliga-
tions met, and not as though flight were itself a chief satis-
faction of divine claims. And there is explicit urging, in
other Indian creeds, to avoid excess of privation as well as
of indulgence. " Devotion is not his, O Arguna ! who eats
too much, nor his who eats not at all," says Krishna, " not
his who is addicted to too much sleep, nor his who is ever
awake."1 " There are two extremes, O Bhikkhus," the
founder of Buddhism is reported to have said at Benares —
' there are two extremes which the man who has given up
the world ought not to follow — the habitual practice, on
the one hand, of those things whose attraction depends
upon the passions, and especially of sensuality — a low and
pagan way of seeking satisfaction, unworthy, unprofitable,
and fit only for the worldly minded — and the habitual
practice, on the other hand, of asceticism or self-mortifica-
tion, which is painful, unworthy, and unprofitable."2 ' In
seeking wisdom then," says another account of the Buddha,
" it is not by these austerities a man may reach the law of
life. But likewise to indulge in pleasure is opposed to right,
this is the fool's barrier against wisdom's light."3 For a
religion determined to escape all pain and longing, it would
easily seem reasonable not to increase them by long priva-
tion.

The feeling that allegiance to the Perfect requires no
separation from the world is relatively strong in Christianity,
in spite of its ascetic members. Jesus himself is said to
have fasted long, on one occasion, in the wilderness ; but
the trend of his life and teaching was to make such practices
at most a subordinate part of religion. It is by no means

1 Bhagavadgita, VI (VIII, 69).

2 Dhamma-A'akka-Ppavattana-Sutta, 2 (XI, 146 f.).

3 Fo-Sho-Hing-Tsan-King, III, 15, 1240 (XIX, 174), italics in tr.

The World Accepted or Renounced 71

clear that he was opposed to all private possession. It
seems probable that he was not opposed to the authority of
secular government ; he apparently felt that there was a
side of life that by right belonged to Caesar. He entered
heartily into the social life of his time ; indeed, the scrupu-
lous were led to complain of his freedom in eating and drink-
ing, and of his association with persons of ill repute. " Be-
hold a man gluttonous, and a wine-bibber," they said, " a
friend of publicans and sinners."1 He was not afraid, like
so many Oriental religionists, of the contaminating influence
of woman. If Paul was uncordial toward marriage, and
later Christians have at various periods refused to partake
of the common goods of life, it is hardly to be attributed
to the direct example of Christ himself. His spirit seems
to have been expressed more truly by the writer of the
Epistle to Timothy, who warns against those who in later
times will give heed to seducing spirits, " forbidding to
marry, and commanding to abstain from meats, which God
hath created to be received with thanksgiving. . . . For
every creature of God is good, and nothing to be refused,
if it be received with thanksgiving." Sects with some
special form of renunciation — as the Abelites of Africa in
the fifth century — or ascetics of farther-reaching self-denial,
are to be found among Christians ; but they are not of such
number or historic weight that we need class Christianity
as a whole among the renouncing faiths. The Church has
included both types of religion, but the life-accepting branch
has been the stronger. The American is apt to be over-
impressed by the near austerities of the Puritan. But even
the Puritans, as the wide history of religion goes, were
relatively temperate in their renunciation. They protested
against extravagance of dress, against drunkenness, gam-
bling, and bear-baiting ; but, on the whole, there was no
general rejection of marriage and the family ; no per-
petual fasting, vigil, and flagellation ; no fundamental
distrus* of private property. The common natural desires

1 Matthew, XI, 19.

72 Psychology of the Religious Life

and the enjoyment in their gratification are in keeping with
a holy life, according to their poet Milton. The nuptials
of Adam and Eve, in Paradise Lost, are made a sacred
pleasure ; and the Angel Raphael actually eats with zest
the material meal which Eve prepares :

" So down they sat

And to their viands fell ; nor seemingly
The Angel, nor in mist — the common gloss
Of theologians — but with keen dispatch
Of real hunger, and concoctive heat
To transubstantiate." :

Milton and Luther, with their pleasure in the gentler sides
of life, showed a characteristic religious humanism — a union
of piety with a hearty approval of sane human interests and
enjoyment.

Religious restraint thus stands contrasted with religious
freedom, and there is action and reaction between the
opposing forces. Freedom may be tempered with hesitation,
and renunciation softened with some acceptance. But the
two urgings face each other unceasingly. Indeed, there is a
close affinity between restraint and want of restraint ; and
even withdrawal may be expressed in opposite ways. The
priests of Egypt and of Judea were most scrupulous in the
cleansing of their bodies and their garments.2 But the
scruples of the priests of Zeus at Dodona, or the desire
to appear scrupulous, brought the very opposite — an accept-
ance of discomfort and personal uncleanness.3 Such con-
tradictions appear also in the life of nuns and monks, where
the self-same general view of religion may lead to extreme
refinement of dress and cleanliness, and again to disgusting
neglect. In India, the Vishnavites eat meat ostentatiously
and drink all manner of intoxicants without scruple ; while
the companion sect, the Sivaites, are marvels of sobriety and
abstinence.4 Or closer together still, the god Siva, in one

1 Bk. V, 433 fif.

2 Herodotus, II, 37 ; cf. Numbers, XIX, 7.

3 Iliad, XVI, 233 f. ; Strabo : Geography, VII, 7, II.

4 Dubois : Hindu Manners, tr. Beauchamp, 1897, p. 115.

The World Accepted or Renounced 73

of his characters, is the great Yogi, the great ascetic —
naked, covered with ashes, and of a type whose feats of
suppression include years of standing on a pillar in rain and
fierce heat — a picture made familiar to us by Tennyson's
' St. Simeon Stylites.' But the same Siva, a god of morti-
fication, is in another character licentious, and leads his
wild and drunken followers over hill and valley like a
Bacchus ! x Asceticism and sensuality here go almost hand-
in-hand ; and, indeed, as we go down the scale of religious
culture, we find the bond between these opposites exceed-
ingly strong. Among some of the American Indians the
youth at initiation is, after a long period of privation, sud-
denly plunged into wild excess. With the Pipiles of Central
America the indulgences at the time of planting cocoa or
other seed were preceded by several days of uncommon self-
denial ; and a similar custom has been observed in Java,
when the bloom is on the rice.2 The riotous Saturnalia, too,
of which something must be said in a later chapter, were
often the culmination or the precursor of a period of great
restraint. Whether for obtaining food or for victory in
war, the savage at one moment feels that self-denial is
most appropriate ; but again, these same aims may seem
to him best furthered by self-indulgence.3 So close do
profligacy and austerity lie together.

But not only are the two extremes, license and self-
abnegation, thus closely joined, but we are able to see
something of the tie which binds them.4 Extreme restraint
is apt to come only where there are strong impulses impatient
of control, and where heroic measures alone can check
them. There is here, as for the drunkard, no middle ground ;
it must be either abstinence or debauch. But we may dis-
cern also a doctrinal or logical affinity between the two

1 See de la Saussaye : Manual, Engl. tr., 1891, pp. 650 ff. for asceticism
and sensuality in Hindu religion ; cf. also the excesses of Brahmins, in
Dubois, op. cit., esp. pp. 288 f.

a Bancroft: Native Races, 1886, II, 719 f. ; Frazer : Golden Bough,
1900, II, 205.

3 Frazer : Golden Bough, 1900, II, 214 f., 305, 309, etc.

4 See p. 101 ; cf. Frazer, op. cit., II, 204 ff.

74 Psychology of the Religious Life

forms of life. When one feels that he now is actually united
with the divinity, it depends almost on chance whether his
sense of union may lead to a condemnation or to an honour-
ing of the natural desires. By reason of his very elevation,
by reason of identifying himself with his god, whatever he is
strongly impelled to do he may regard as a divine impulse,
as something to be obeyed as having the highest sanction.
In this way the Hindu Vallabda, affirming the essential
unity of the human soul with the highest deity, developed
a doctrine of humouring all desires, rather than of restrain-
ing them, as did the Hindu ascetics — a teaching eagerly
followed into all manner of licentiousness.1 Or quite the
contrary, the devotee may feel that he is now set apart ;
and having tasted the delights of the spirit, he can no
longer without profanation so much as desire the low
pleasures of earth. But the excesses here alluded to must
in no wise be confounded with the more normal religious
acceptance of the world. This need not run to looseness in
the least ; it may merely make suitable provision for our
deeper human desires, and permit a harmony between the
earthly and the spiritual. The love of perfection now
directs and beautifies the native impulses and institutions
of society ; there is an attempt to fulfil, and not to destroy,
the law both of body and of mind. Where religion leads
men to become so lenient toward their rudest instincts that
the ordinary civil and moral restraints are felt to be of
no importance, this must be regarded as an excessive and
unbalanced development of world-acceptance.

1 de la Saussaye : Manual, Engl. tr., 1891, p. 645.

CHAPTER IV

THE INCENTIVES TO RENUNCIATION

r I ^HE opposite inclinations to partake and to renounce
JL are not peculiar to the religious life. They appear
where there is no indication of religious motives. It is not
certain but that the self-control, quite unsupported by
reverence, which misers often exercise, is — if not in its
beginnings, yet possibly later on — of some like mental
nature to asceticism. In the accumulation of wealth with-
out yielding to any of the temptations to indulgence which
wealth suggests, there must often be a sense of self-mastery,
perhaps even of secret heroism, which lifts the man in his
own eyes above his fellows, and seems to him a full reward.
But however this may be, we do in other directions find
men voluntarily renouncing the common attractions of the
world. Many a talent has lain unused, just from contempt
of what the world applauds. Whenever there is pressure
from without to bring one's conduct or thought into fixed
bounds, human nature is tempted to defy these restraints
and to obtain the satisfaction which comes of resistance
and the forcible maintenance of freedom. A gifted man
whom I know has long refused to wear a cravat. This, I
imagine, is his declaration of independence. Hamerton's
friend who would never wear a black coat was of the same
type. There are men innumerable who fairly revel in limita-
tions, if only these be self-imposed. The frontier is largely
peopled by this class, and partly from them obtains its
ruggedness of thought and conduct. And Bohemia in our
cities, with its confused devotion and indifference to

75

76 Psychology of the Religious Life

various ' causes,' presents a picture wherein it is hard
to discern whether self-restraint for freedom's sake is
or is not exceeded by indulgence. Certainly the joy of
' roughing it ' in some mountain wilderness is out of all
proportion to the direct pleasure in the scenery. The escape
from the exactions of ' the world ' brings the intoxication
which so many feel. The nature-lovers, like Muir or Words-
worth, are often mild secular anchorites preaching the
rewards of turning from convention :

" The world is too much with us; late and soon,
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers."

Such an attitude is not entirely from a dislike for men, or
from indifference ; it springs in part from a sense of the
endless warfare between the actual and the ideal, and of
the relief from this warfare which Nature brings. Clouds
and foliage and all other things that are fair in landscape
seem to exemplify perfectly what they were intended to
exemplify. In this they are like children. They suggest
no purpose thwarted ; but beautiful in all that it seems
possible for them to be, they bring the feeling that perfection
and reality are for once in happy union. Nature is thus
the refuge and consolation of idealists. She is the present
pledge that it is possible for the spirit to be free from con-
flict, to attain its inmost desire.

If we were to seek farther the motives of religious accept-
ance and renunciation, we should have our labour lightened
if we regarded one of these attitudes as normal, and tried
simply to explain the other as a divergence from the norm.
And which of the two would seem the natural mien toward
life would perhaps depend on one's own temperament.
Somewhat arbitrarily, then, let us assume that world-
acceptance stands less in need of explanation, and that the
departure — world-rejection — alone presents a problem. In-
deed, those who are in the counsels of evolution, with its
varieties of ' selection,' its mutations and survivals, would
doubtless find no difficulty in making clear to us that human

The Incentives to Renunciation 77

society could never have lived and flourished if the great
mass of men had not been sympathetic toward its customs
and institutions, as well as toward health, strength, and
some possessions. The type that is bent on the religious
rejection of all these things — like its far-distant analogue,
the anti-moral or criminal type of character — must from
this point of view appear as the exception, the biological
' sport.'

But this need be no final point of view. For we can trace
world-rejection more nearly to its source than would be
implied in calling it a freak. It becomes in some measure
intelligible when we see the many influences which foster
it in advanced society, and see also some of its springs in
savage life. We might pass to its early history first.

There is among savages a deep-seated conviction, not
only that evil is very real and insistent, but that its hold
upon us may be eased by certain avoidances or inflictions.
The Delaware Indians, for example, used both physical
emetic and scourging from foot to head to expel evil from
the mouth. Especially in connection with death and with
the peril which lies in the possible entrance of the spirit of
the dead into the living, is scourging practised among
savages. Thus the Banmanas of Senegambia have little
children beat one another when one of their number dies.1
And the Guahibos on the Orinoco, at a ceremony the year
after a chief's death, have his widow and her future hus-
band scourged with rods. And another woman, laid on the
chief's grave, has her tongue pierced with a bone until the
blood runs down her breast.2 Likewise, when a man of
some note dies among the Arrawaks of British Guiana, a
great feast of several days is given, a year after his death,
and the relatives dance over his grave, lashing " each other
with whips prepared for that purpose, till frequently the
blood gushes out, and they are afterwards obliged to keep
their hammocks for days together."3 But if scourging is

1 Frazer : Golden Bough, 1900, III, 130 f.

2 Crevaux : Voyages dans I'Amerique du Sud, 1883, p. 548.

3 Bernau : Missionary Labours in British Guiana, 1847, p. 52.

78 Psychology of the Religious Life

at times to expel evil, it is not always for this purpose. One
of the natives of French Guiana besought the visiting whites
to do him the service of applying the rods to him. " I beat
him my best," writes Coudreau, " and the face of the good
Oueri beamed in gratitude. It seems that to be flogged by
a chief is an infallible means of inculcating all manner of
physical and moral qualities."1 Longer, and in some ways
far more serious, trials have to be endured among other
peoples. He who was to become the Inca of Peru must fast
for a month without seeing the light of day.2 And the
Indians of Granada " kept those who were to be Rulers or
Commanders, whether Men or Women, lock'd up for several
Years, when they were Children, some of them seven Years,
and this so close, that they were not to see the Sun, for if
they should happen to see it, they forfeited the Lordship,
eating certain Sorts of Food appointed, and those who were
their Keepers at certain Times went into the Retreat, or
Prison, and scourg'd them severely."3

Thus there grows rank the idea of the riddance of evil, or
of the attainment of good, by fasting or flagellation or by
withholding oneself from acts or objects mysteriously con-
nected with spiritual peril. To illustrate this feeling fully
would require one to enter a further field of avoidance, a
part of which goes by the name of ' taboo.' Certain animals
must not be killed at all, or the}'' may not be killed by men
who belong to a special society or clan or totem. Other
animals may be killed only within limited times, else there
will be misfortune. It is dangerous to allow one's reflection
to be in water. The regalia of the chief may have a deadly
effect if touched by common hands. The trimmings from
the hair or finger-nails, or even the spittle, must be care-
fully destroyed or hidden, lest they fall into another's hands
and give a magic power over him from whom they came.

1 Coudreau : Chez nos Indiens, 1895, p. 544.

2 Cieza de Leon : Second Part of the Chronicle of Peru, tr. Markham,
1883, p. 18.

3 Herrera : History of the Vast Continent and Islands of America,
commonly call'd The West-Indies, tr. Stevens, 1726, V, 88.

The Incentives to Renunciation 79

The restrictions upon free and careless conduct, if one is to
avoid evil from human enemies or from the ill-will of spirits
and gods, are really beyond number. There are acts that
must be done to avert calamity, but there are infinitely more
things that must not be done. Indeed, just as fear is pro-
minent in early religion, and fear leads normally, not to
free conduct but to restraint, to a kind of paralysis of action ;
so the early code of religion and morality is developed
marvellously on the restrictive, the negative side. The
need of check in childhood, shown by the frequency of the
mother's negative commands — " Don't do that ! " — is em-
blematic of the early religious and moral training of the
race. The rules of conduct pleasing to the gods are pre-
dominantly prohibitions. And even when we are far beyond
a primitive stage of religion, the divine law may still be
summed up in the form of " Thou shalt not." The Hebrew
Ten Commandments are a good instance of this negative
turn in early morals. But examples could be drawn from
other sources :

' Thus spake the Great King of Glory :
' Ye shall slay no living thing.

Ye shall not take that which has not been given.

Ye shall not act wrongly touching the bodily desires.

Ye shall speak no he.

Ye shall drink no maddening drink.

Ye shall eat as ye have eaten.' "l

And in the Rules of Conduct in the Tevigga Sutta — a part
of the southern Buddhist scriptures — prohibition is added
to prohibition. In the portion which I shall here reproduce,
it will be noticed that each section sets forth primarily
what must be put away. Over against the evil that must
be put away, at first a positive virtue is commended, but
soon the laws lapse into requirements of avoidance pure
and simple.

' Now wherein, Vase#/za, is his conduct good ? '
' Herein, O Vase^Aa, that putting away the murder of

1 Maha-Sudassana-Sutta, I, 16 (XI, 253).

8o Psychology of the Religious Life

that which lives, he abstains from destroying life. The
cudgel and the sword he lays aside ; and, full of modesty
and pity, he is compassionate and kind to all creatures that
have life !

' This is the kind of goodness that he has.

' He refrains from injuring any herb or any creature. He
takes but one meal a day ; abstaining from food at night-
time, or at the wrong time. He abstains from dancing, sing-
ing, music, and theatrical shows. He abstains from wear-
ing, using, or adorning himself with garlands, and scents, and
unguents, and he abstains from lofty couches and large beds.

' This, too, is the kind of goodness that he has.

' He abstains from the getting of silver or gold. He ab-
stains from the getting of grain uncooked. He abstains
from the getting of flesh that is raw. He abstains from
the getting of any woman or girl. He abstains from the
getting of any bondmen or bondwomen. He abstains from
the getting of sheep or goats. He abstains from the getting
of fowls or swine. He abstains from the getting of ele-
phants, cattle, horses, and mares. He abstains from the
getting of fields or lands.

' This, too, is the kind of goodness that he has.

' He refrains from carrying out those commissions on
which messengers can be sent. He refrains from buying
and selling. He abstains from tricks with false weights,
alloyed metals, or false measures. He abstains from bribery,
cheating, fraud, and crooked ways.

' This, too, is the kind of goodness that he has.

' He refrains from maiming, killing, imprisoning, highway
robbery, plundering villages, or obtaining money by threats
of violence.

' This, too, is the kind of goodness that he has.' MI

The longer statements of these requirements are still more
negative in form, more confined to prohibition.

Now in all right conduct, there inevitably is avoidance
of evil as well as the doing of good deeds. And asceticism
1 Tevig-ga Sutta, ch. II, The tffila Silam (XI, 189 fit.).

The Incentives to Renunciation 8 1

is, in part, an extravagant development of this negative
side. It has received a legacy of restraint, and has increased
the inheritance an hundredfold. The check of action, so
important as a preparation for sound conduct, has here
been made the main and almost sole ingredient. As in the
life of the body it is important to have inhibition — to have
some physiological brake, lest the heart, for instance, shall
beat too fast, and every excitement to the eye or ear attract
attention or cause some inconvenient muscular response —
so, in our general conduct, there must be inhibition. Re-
nunciation we may regard as an almost pathological over-
growth of this inhibitive function. The religious sanction
is here laid upon hesitancy, upon the dread of doing the
wrong thing, rather than upon free activity for good, upon
throwing all one's energy into the accomplishment of useful
ends.

But this is not all that encourages renunciation, even in
early society. The motive for a certain phase of self-denial,
found in one of the Chinese classics, will perhaps here be
found of help. Fasting and vigils in midsummer are urged,
in order " to bring about that state of settled quiet in which
the influence of darkness and decay shall obtain its full
development."1 And in midwinter, regarding similar ab-
stinence, superior men wish " all affairs to be quiet, while
they wait for the settlement of those principles of darkness
and decay, and brightness and growth."2 There is here a
suggestion of something like sympathetic assistance to the
great forces of nature while in crisis — a feeling which runs
through much of the conduct of early man. He often
refrains from gratifying his normal passions at the times that
are critical for the plenty of his yams or his turtles, or for
success against his enemies. And women and children re-
maining at home during war or hunting must show the
restraint which is needed to give the right aid to those
away on their expedition.3

1 Li /a iv, 2, 2, 15 (xxvii, 275).

8 Ibid., IV, 4, 2, 13 (XXVII, 305).
3 Frazer : Golden Bough, 1900, I, 29 ff. ; II, 210 f., 216.
G

82 Psychology of the Religious Life

These instances all point to an impulse to express by con-
duct a sympathy with the victory or embarrassment of in-
visible powers — a thought which would enter, when further
spiritualized, into the fasting of Lent and especially of Good
Friday, as though the universe were again, in memory,
passing through its supreme trial, and man for sympathy
could not but remain hushed and expectant. But beyond
the involuntary stillness of one who is absorbed in watching
a stupendous conflict, there may also be a deliberate attempt
to assist the gods in their trials directly, as we know from
the Vedas and the Avesta,1 as well as from the rites of many
a primitive people. What a man forgoes and gives to the
gods, adds to their strength and helps them overcome
their enemies. The welfare of the gods is here consciously
recognized as dependent on the interest and support of men.
In primitive society the sympathetic self-denials are more
occasional, while the renunciations which appear in later
religion are often lasting. But these occasional fastings and
vigils at such times as the great powers are in crisis may
well have contributed to more enduring self-denials. Es-
pecially in the zeal to fulfil to the uttermost the require-
ments of divinity, it would be easy to forget the original
motives for such quiet and restraint, and these would tend
to seem virtuous in themselves. But if they were of merit
when done occasionally, how much more meritorious would
denial be if continued through a lifetime !

In pointing out the incentives to renunciation, it must
also be said that there is an emotional stir or excitability
that comes from extreme self-denial, whether it be a refusal
of food and drink, or a long separation from one's kind.
And this excitability doubtless is dimly appreciated as a
religious aid, and tends to justify asceticism in the eyes of
those who practise it. Our nerves become almost morbidly
ready to respond to all manner of stimulation, or even to
explode spontaneously, when there has been a continued
drain upon their strength. The tired man is apt to be the

i See pp. 138, 288.

The Incentives to Renunciation 83

irritable man. The person ill-nourished or exhausted has
less poise, is more emotional, and with him laughter and
tears lie near the surface. The verge of starvation or of
mortal thirst often brings visions and voices and an infinite
longing ; while those cut off from all associates — the
prisoner in his solitary cell, the lonely shepherd, the com-
panionless lighthouse keeper — may become insane from the
weight of their unnatural life.

Now where piety is measured by its emotional depth,
great value must inevitably be attached to all those de-
vices that make men less stolid, more open to the play of
sentiment, less bound by the facts that lie within our
sensible horizon, more ready to accept as real the world
that lies beyond. Partly because they work in this direc-
tion, are solitude, hunger, and the want of sleep felt to be
important for the religious. Fasting and vigils and the
scourge bring no assistance to careful reasoning or to
practical action in some intricate design ; but other sides
of the mind receive aid — the whole imaginative tissue, the
memory, the vague or impetuous desire. And when once
these have been stirred to life, it is easy for the religious to
give them a religious direction. Mortification is thus well
planned to contribute to the emotional and visional, if not
visionary, side of religion. Ascetics are skilled specialists
in the physiological nurture of emotion. The stoppage of
all the ordinary outlets, the damming of the normal channels
which, in common life, give vent to impulse and feeling,
causes these to accumulate until they burst in floods into
the religious field.

Bat in solitude and in renunciation generally there is more
than a mere fondness for emotion. There is an active dis-
trust of what are called ' the senses ' — a distrust which has
some ground. It is true that of ' the senses ' religionists
often have a somewhat indistinct idea, meaning by the
term at times the five special senses, of sight, hearing, smell,
+aste, and touch ; or again, more especially the appetites
and ' lasts ' which go with these, as well as with hunger and

84 Psychology of the Religious Life

other grumblings of the body. And often in his attempt
to kill off one group of impressions which distract him from
his meditations, he cultivates a whole crop of insidious
sensations — hunger, thirst, muscular weariness, and organic
pain. There is here, of course, no real escape from the
senses into a supersensuous realm. But even with such
misguided efforts, there seems to be this right thought, that
there exists a certain rivalry between the senses and the
higher processes of mind ; and that if the soul would be
free, it must not too continually live in its eyes and ears
and skin. Well-trained powers of observation, which we at
times hear warmly commended, are not an unmixed bless-
ing. One must have the power also of not observing, of
being negligent of his surroundings, if he is to think. No
one can well put into mental order what comes to him, if
his sense-impressions are intrusive. The connection of the
parts of a musical composition, the thought which a speaker
is trying to express, is less appreciated when one is so near
that the ears are stunned with thundering sound. The
richest colour in painting rarely goes with the most accurate
drawing, with the nicest sense of form. The tones of land-
scape or of the human face come out most clear when we
cease to recognize what the coloured objects are, but take
them in through half-closed eye-lids, or with head turned
or inverted. There is thus some jealousy between our
senses and our understanding. And the perception of this,
when given an inappropriate importance, may well have
added momentum to the ascetic movement to deny all
right to the senses. Religion is an appreciation of an un-
seen world ; and the intercourse with that world is helped by
veiling the too insistent presence of sensuous things.

But the religious misgiving in regard to our sensations is
due not alone to the fact that their vivid presence hinders
the perception of subtle spiritual bonds. The senses, as I
have already said, are closely allied with vegetative and
animal desire, and thus they lead us to consider the ascetic
distrust of the body and all its cravings.

The Incentives to Renunciation 85

The body is often regarded as the especial seat of sin.
Plato at times sees all our ignorance and perversion as
coming from the soul's connection with the world of matter.
When once set free by death from these physical bonds, it
will behold clear-eyed the divine Ideas, and then can do no
wrong. And the Apostle Paul in a like manner contrasts
the flesh and the spirit. The mind, in its own essential life,
may be pure, but brought to sin by the overpowering in-
fluence of the body. " For I delight in the law of God after
the inward man : but I see another law in my members,
warring against the law of my mind, and bringing me into
captivity to the law of sin which is in my members."1 In
a somewhat similar way the Buddha, in a Chinese narrative
of his life, likens the senses to wild or ill-broken horses, to
which the wise and prudent will allow no license ; they are
our greatest foes, the cause of all our misery.2 And where
natural impulse is under condemnation, it is most fit that
woman should by men be regarded as a menace to the
spirit :

' How are we to conduct ourselves, Lord, with regard
to womankind ? ' " asks one of the Buddha's disciples.
" ' Don't see them, Ananda.'

' But if we should see them, what are we to do ? '

' Abstain from speech, Ananda.'

' But if they should speak to us, Lord, what are we to
do? '

' Keep wide awake, Ananda.' "3

This feeling, which in the Christian canon finds expres-
sion in the Epistles rather than in the Gospel, was not en-
tirely absent even from such world-acceptant peoples as the
Greeks and the Egyptians.4 The latter were able to locate
the source of sin with great exactness in the body. When
someone of importance was embalmed, we are told by
Porphyry that the Egyptians " take out the stomach and

1 Romans, VII, 22 f.

8 Fo-Sho-Hing-Tsan-King, V, 26, 2030 f. (XIX, 297).

3 Maha-Parinibbana-Sutta, V, 23 (XI, 91).

* Herodotus, II, 64.

86 Psychology of the Religious Life

put it into a coffer, and, holding the coffer to the sun,
protest, one of the embalmers making a speech on behalf
of the dead. This speech, which Euphantos translated
from his native tongue, is as follows : ' O Lord of the
Sun, and all ye gods who give life to man, receive me
and make me a companion of the eternal gods. For the
gods, whom my parents made known to me, as long as
I have lived in this world I have continued to reverence,
and those who gave birth to my body I have ever honoured.
And as for other men, I have neither slain any, nor de-
frauded any of anything entrusted to me, nor committed
any other wicked act ; but if by chance I have committed
any sin in my life, by either eating or drinking what was
forbidden, not of myself did I sin, but owing to these mem-
bers ' — at the same time showing the coffer in which the
stomach was. And having said this, he throws it into the
river, and embalms the rest of the body as being pure."1

This feeling that the stomach or the body generally is
the culprit upon whom the condemnation for a man's sins
should fall is a natural result of the constant need of whip-
ping into line those impulses which guard the interests of the
body. We feel that we have other things to do than eat,
drink, sleep, and keep warm ; and our sense of the import-
ance of our higher purposes makes us regard the vegetative
and animal functions as rivals, indeed as enemies, of what
we value most. The body has a right to exist, and a right
to clamour if neglected ; but it has no right to rule. The
interest in human faces and in conversation, the curiosity
regarding the connection of events, the enjoyment of
scenery and adventure — these have to fight for a place along
with the craving for nourishment and shelter. Too often
there is a real clash among these various interests ; and it
is natural that partisanship should then arise, and that the
incompatibility of the rivals should be exaggerated. We
needlessly lose hope of ever making our various desires live

1 Porphyry : De Abst., IV, 10, quoted by Sayce : Religs. of Anc.
Egypt and Babylonia, 1902, p. 64 f.

The Incentives to Renunciation 87

together in love and charity, and feel that there is nothing
for it but to regard the flesh and all the physical world as
belonging to the devil. Thus asceticism often properly
comes from the fact that physiological cravings stand in
the way of noble purpose. And the distrust of the body,
so begot, is nourished by the conflict between the senses
themselves and our higher mental life. Any sane man must
xeep the sense-organs and all the body in subjection ; the
ascetic merely carries this effort to an extreme.

But besides the need that certain of our interests be made
handmaids to the others, there is an exceedingly strong
motive to renunciation in the feeling that the things of this
world are dear to us ; and, just because they are dear, make
precious offerings to divinity. It is a peculiar turn to the
longing to give all that is good to God. I have already
spoken of that motive to self-denial, where the savage
believes that his own abstinence adds strength to the
heavenly powers. But there is nothing more changeable
than the ideas which lie behind the self-same rite. In the
later life of religion the refusal of proper food and clothing,
the severing of all social ties, is no longer felt as directly
adding anything to the deity. The value of the act now
lies in the penitence, the submissiveness, which it reveals.
By divesting himself of all that seems of earthly good, man
expresses his sense of guilt ; without waiting for Heaven
to impose it on him, he metes out retribution for his own
shortcomings ; by privations which seem to him but of
time and of the body, he becomes assured of freedom from
more serious loss. And further, he shows to the uttermost
his fealty to his Lord. The forms of loyalty here merge
with those of sacrifice. Even though the gratification that
is foregone cannot actually be added to the possessions of
God, yet there has been symbolized by man the sole value
of the Ideal. And the rare expression of his fidelity to
the unseen good, helps to bridge the gulf which for ever
opens between the worshipper and Him he worships. The
ascetic life must therefore be regarded as in part a special

88 Psychology of the Religious Life

form of sacrifice : the world and all its attractions are laid,
like a gift, upon the altar. The multitude of intentions and
ideas which cluster about sacrifice may in this way become
united also with ascetic renunciation.

Thus there are many incentives to a complete surrender
of the joys of earth. Man is brought to such surrender by
sympathy with the crisis of spiritual powers, and by the
thought that human conduct can in some degree affect
their welfare. Self-denial increases the readiness of vemo-
tion which may be turned into religious channels. There is
an appreciation of the peril to the soul which comes from
the senses and the body generally ; and in the attempt 1o
ward off the danger, extravagant measures are taken thit
tend to kill the very life they would protect. In the ne^d
which all men have, to bring their impulses into order so
that these may all conspire to an acceptable end, there
comes to be an undue value set upon inhibition. Suppres-
sion, which is good when room is thereby made for better
things, comes to be regarded as a primary end ; and human
duty is seen entirely out of drawing. But to express to the
uttermost one's honour to the Ideal is also an important
motive in asceticism. For love of divinity nothing may be
retained as ours. Whatever we hold dear, whatever is
good either for the body or for the mind must be laid at the
feet of the Perfect, and even then no sufficient token has
been given of its sublimity.

CHAPTER V
i

THE OPPOSITION OF GLOOM AND CHEER

have perhaps become apparent in religion its
J_ immense suppression and restraint, standing in con-
trast to its vital enlargement and inclusion — rival impulses
that when free and without bounds, appear as askesis and
as license. But joined to these are further rivals that should
be examined, namely, joy and sadness, and the still broader
contrast between mere excitement and calm, between ardour
and coolness if not chill.

For the clearest examples of religion unimpassioned yet
real we might go to the ancient world. In the best days
of the Republic, the Roman character, little given to excess
of any kind, showed in religion its moderation (in spite of
occasional outbursts) by a well-ordered worship of Jupiter
and his great companions, and in homelier rites to the
spirits of its ancestors and of the hearth. And in Con-
fucianism religion is as unimpassioned as the Roman ; in-
deed, is perhaps less swayed by stormy feeling. Matter-of-
fact provision for the honour and comfort of the forefathers ;
the official payment, by the State, of what is due to the great
nature-divinities of earth and sky — this is the tone pervading
the ancient canon. The religious world is here a reality ;
but it kindles warmth, without flame, in the soul. Indeed,
established religion generally is moderate. In countries
like England or Germany, the charge is sometimes made
that the official religion is marked by the chill and rigour
of death. The very breadth of such organizations, however,
requires them to shelter divergent types ; and so, on the

89

Psychology of the Religious Life

whole, they are neither ardent nor cold. Extreme opposes
extreme, and the dominant tone is restrained. The fervent
type is well illustrated by the older Jewish prophets, with
their unsounded depths of passion. And in the rush and
vehemence which have made Mohammedanism such a
world-power, we see the earnestness of the Semite again
displayed, although in an altered direction and with less
nobility of design than with the Jew. In Christianity
(which, too, is in some sense a child of Judaism), the Do-
minicans and early Franciscans, the Wesleyans of the
eighteenth century, the Salvation Army of to-day, show an
almost consuming fire. But Christianity as a whole is calm
rather than excited — in part because of the balance and
control in Jesus himself, and in part from the strong in-
tellectual and purposive traits of the great peoples who,
in adopting it, have helped to develop and fix its character.
Thus the temperance of the Greek, and the Roman's prac-
tical poise, have done much to keep Christianity sober as
well as strong.

There is perhaps little danger that calm and excitement
will be thought always to stand out sharp and definite, or
that a type of character in which one of them appears will
seem of necessity to exclude the other. There are in the
world all degrees ; and in most of the advanced religions
are found intermediate grades, as well as representatives
of the contrasting types in all their purity. In fact, a single
person may show at different times the characteristics of
both extremes ; his religion, at first strongly emotional,
may later pass into quiet purpose and steady light. Or
under the urging of others, a devotion normally calm may
for a time be passionate. With this slight reference to the
opposition of coolness and excitement — slighter here be-
cause at other points it reappears — the contrast between
joy and sadness will be considered.

It is so well known that religion runs to these opposite
poles of feeling, and instances must lie so ready in each
man's recollection, that it would be improvident to spend

The Opposition of Gloom and Cheer 91

much time in trying to show the reality of the contrast.
The heightened pleasure of many of the early Christians, the
impression which they gave (though by no means universally)
that they had received tidings of great joy, stands sharp
against the despondent mood which piety has often shown.
Yet even with the Christians there was a sense of respon-
sibility, a sense of the evil of the times, that gave a sombre
border to their rejoicing. So the best instance in the old
world of a cheerful religion would perhaps be found, not
with the Christian, but with the Greek. It is true that the
Greek gave no such prominence to the joys of the future
life, as did the Christian ; but this need not bring any false
estimate of the tone of each religion. Logically the Greek
perhaps ought to have felt sadder than the Christian, but
such things do not go by schoolmen's rules. He enjoyed
the world about him, the conversation and disputes of
men, the plays and festivals and noble buildings, the life
and struggles of men and gods. Buoyant humanist to the
core, delighting in all the tone and beat of life, he was not
to be depressed by anything in this world or in the world
beyond. He was not unmindful of the future, but the
future was distant and unreal compared with the riches
now within his reach. Especially the faith set forth in
Homer is for the most part brilliant, having its gladness
touched only with that solemnity which befits the universe
at festival.

As we move eastward we find a stately joy of faith, in
some ways like the Greek, chanted in the hymns of the Rig-
Veda. Here is expressed the love of light, the rejoicing in
the music of the gods of storm, the security felt in the pro-
tecting care of Agni, the kinsman, the dear friend of men.
Yet even while exulting in the glory of the gods — of Indra
and the Maruts — there are premonitions of that evil which
later is utterly to overcast the heavens. The worshipper
prays that theV' hideous darkness " may be hidden from
him; that "every tusky fiend may be destroyed."1 Or

1 Vedic Hymns, I, 86, 10 (XXXII, 154), Miiller's tr.

92 Psychology of the Religious Life

there comes before his mind the thought of Varuna, stern
and angry — Varuna, whose wrath toward men must be
turned by the interceding prayers of the faithful god of
Fire.1 And the Persian, who also was like the Greek in
many ways, showed in his scriptures a joy not unbroken,
yet deep and wide. The sense of evil, though strong, was
not yet overpowering ; it was lightened by assurance of
coming victory. A thought to which allusion has already
been made, shows in the form of creed their confidence in
the divine : the day would come when the great Deliverer,
the child of Zarathustra, would complete his father's work,
conquering the foes of man and of God, and renewing the
whole earth in goodness.2 Here the mood wavers ; at first
depressed, it rises in the end, and remains confident.
The Parsee's joy is further reflected in a kind of paean to
" the holy Zarathustra ; who first thought what is good,"
in whom was heard " the word of holiness ; who was the
lord and master of the world " ; "in whose birth and
growth the waters and the plants rejoiced ; in whose birth
and growth the waters and the plants grew ; in whose
birth and growth all the creatures of the good creations
cried out, Hail ! ' Hail to us ! for he is born, the Athravan,
Spitama Zarathustra.' "3 In its large outlines such a faith
lays no such stress on evil as is often said. The world here,
as for the Jew confidently expecting the Messiah, and for
the Christian who sees the world destined to be the seat of
a city that shall descend from God, is of a happy outcome.
The feeling of joy is no longer simple and unmixed ; it has
tried its strength by overcoming pain, and retains this in
memory.

Sad and weary religion is best illustrated in the Orient.
It is true that in much of the religion even of India, the
home of so much sorrow, there is an undertone of joy — as
in the hymns to the Maruts and to Agni and to other Vedic
gods. And in more modern India, beside the gloomy and

1 Vedic Hymns, IV, i, 2-5 (XLVI, 307). a See pp. 12, 51.
8 Farvardin Vast, XXIV, 88 ff. (XXIII, 201 f.).

The Opposition of Gloom and Cheer 93

malign Siva, there is worshipped the friendly Vishnu,1 and
religious festivals of great hilarity are held, of which more
will be said. But sadness here may completely overshadow
the joy. In Buddhism, as it appears in many of the scrip-
tures, there is an elevation, a longing for the holy way, which
makes the sadness seem rich and almost beautiful ; yet
its ideal is an impassive life, unmoved alike by pain or
pleasure — a passionless existence leading to a death that
never yields to life. This longing for extinction2 is based
on the feeling that life is bitter to the very core. Not that
it is now bitter, but may at some time be sweet. Life is
incapable of yielding any real satisfaction, save the one of
attaining endless death. There remains the duty to seek a
better life, then, not as something good for its own sake,
but merely as a means by which absolute extinction may
at last be reached. Religion here viewing the hopeless pain
that seems inseparable from living, becomes a sublime
suicide ; and the drama of existence is seen as utter
tragedy.

The minuteness with which, in Buddhism, the sources
and structure of suffering, and the modes of escape from
it, are analysed is marvellous :

" ' Now this, O Bhikkhus, is the noble truth concerning
suffering.

' Birth is attended with pain, decay is painful, disease
is painful, death is painful. Union with the unpleasant is
painful, painful is separation from the pleasant ; and any
craving that is unsatisfied, that too is painful. In brief, the
five aggregates which spring from attachment, the con-
ditions of individuality and their cause, are painful.

' This then, O Bhikkhus, is the noble truth concerning
suffering.

1 Monier-Williams : Modern India and the Indians, 1887, pp. 194 f.

2 The doctrine is at times softened down to mean merely the escape
from desire and individuality, with some kind of existence still remaining.
In the Saddharma-Pvmdarika, for example — ch. XV (XXI, 302) — the
Lord declares that his extinction is not real, but is merely announced or
assumed, in order to have greater influence upon men — i.e. it is a pious
fraud.

94 Psychology of the Religious Life

' Now this, O Bhikkhus, is the noble truth concerning
the origin of suffering.

' Verily, it is that thirst, or craving, causing the renewal
of existence, accompanied by sensual delight, seeking satis-
faction now here, now there — that is to say, the craving
for the gratification of the passions, or the craving for a
future life, or the craving for success in this present life.

' This then, O Bhikkhus, is the noble truth concerning
the origin of suffering.

' Now this, O Bhikkhus, is the noble truth concerning
the destruction of suffering.

' Verily, it is the destruction, in which no passion
remains, of this very thirst ; the laying aside of, the getting
rid of, the being free from, the harbouring no longer of this
thirst.

' This then, O Bhikkhus, is the noble truth concerning
the destruction of suffering.

' Now this, O Bhikkhus, is the noble truth concerning
the way which leads to the destruction of sorrow. Verily !
it is this noble eightfold path ; that is to say : Right views,
Right aspirations, Right speech, Right conduct, Right live-
lihood, Right effort, Right mindfulness, and Right con-
templation.

' This then, O Bhikkhus, is the noble truth concerning
the destruction of sorrow.' '!1

And at the village of Kojfigama " the Blessed One ad-
dressed the brethren, and said : ' It is through not under-
standing and grasping four Noble Truths, O brethren, that
we have had to run so long, to wander so long in this weary
path of transmigration, both you and I ! '

' And what are these four ? '

' The noble truth about sorrow ; the noble truth about
the cause of sorrow ; the noble truth about the cessation
of sorrow ; and the noble truth about the path that leads
to that cessation. But when these noble truths are grasped
and known, the craving for existence is rooted out, that

1 Dhamma-Jiakka-Ppavattana-Sutta, 5-8 (XI, 148-150).

The Opposition of Gloom and Cheer 95

which leads to renewed existence is destroyed, and then
there is no more birth ! ' " 1

The eye seems, here and everywhere, fixed upon the pain
that lies in all existence. Not in this world alone is life too
sad to be endured ; it has no attraction for the wise, even
with the very gods. " You, by suffering pain," the Bod-
hisattva is made to say, " You, by suffering pain, desire
earnestly to obtain the joys of birth in heaven ; whilst I
desire to escape from the three worlds, and therefore I give
up what my reason tells me must be rejected."2 So the
escape from sin is not for the greater good beyond, but
rather because of the suffering which unholiness brings.
He that has finally rid himself of the evils, the Asavas, " has
destroyed that Craving Thirst, by thorough penetration of
mind he has rolled away every Fetter, and has made an
end of Pain."3 It is as if the nerves of suffering were ex-
posed at every point, and with the pain a profound melan-
choly had settled on the soul. Indeed, no melancholy could
well bring a more sombre view of life, except for the one
ray, that life need not last for ever. By this one fact alone,
then, the universe is not the worst conceivable, and the
pessimism fails to be absolute. It is by a hair's breadth,
like that narrow margin by which the Agnostic escapes pare
nescience, in that he knows one truth — that Truth is un-
attainable.

The worshippers of Zeus and the followers of Buddha
thus illustrate opposite poles of feeling, and with and be-
tween them range the rest of men. But no people and no
great religion is uniform ; and a benefit of sects, and one
of the causes of their existence, is that they provide for
various temperaments. There are Buddhists that, by re-
jecting the view that life at its best is evil, depart from the
type just described ; just as, by an opposite movement,
the normal Jewish faith is darkened until it becomes hope-

1 Maha-Parinibbana-Sutta, II, 1-2 (XI, 23), and cf. IV, 1-2 (XI, 64).
a Fo-Sho-Hing-Tsan-King, II, 7, 554 (XIX, 79).
3 Sabbasava Sutta, 38 (XI, 307).

g6 Psychology of the Religious Life

less in ' Ecclesiastes,' while the tone of Christianity be-
comes uncharacteristically morose in the religion reflected
in the New England Primer,1 the witchcraft persecutions,
and the preaching of Jonathan Edwards. But time tends
to avenge such injuries, and the same New England of
Puritan depression has in these latter days become the seat
of a fantastic cult of health and cheer. In its little way
this change is in keeping with a new Humanism that is be-
coming widespread in its opposition to the earlier unhappy
reverence ; in much the same way — to compare small things
with great — that the confident humanism of the Renais-
sance was opposed to the cheerless Middle Age. Pleasure, as
a rule, rises and falls with the intensity of life, and the in-
creased vigour of our time is reflected, if often with dis-
tortions, in this quickened current of cheer.

Yet our normal frame seems to repudiate one-sidedness,
either of satisfaction or of dismay ; it will have neither as
a permanent state. Civilization may make of longer dura-
tion the pendular swing toward one or the other limit ; but
in time, whether men go in broadcloth or in breech-clout,
there is a natural retardation or reversal of any prolonged
emotional trend. With the simpler-minded, the changes
between fear and elation in religion are apt to be more
rapid and extravagantly expressed, as with children
almost the same moment may see frolic succeeding tears.
Some attention to these alternations among the more
primitive or naive, will help us to see in better per-
spective the contrasts of feeling that appear in great
religion.

With regard to savages, there are observers who regard
them, for the most part, as oppressed by fear. The thought
of great and devastating natural forces, of ravenous beasts
of prey, of human enemies bent on torture and death, of

1 With such texts as this for the beginner :

" I in the Burying Place may see
Graves shorter there than I ;
From Death's Arrest no Age is free.
Young Children too may die."

The Opposition of Gloom and Cheer 97

spirits difficult to placate and possessing mysterious powers
of injury — the thought of these and of endless other sources
of peril unsuspected by the coddled citizen is supposed to
keep alive an incessant dread. And doubtless this is true
with some who are strongly predisposed to fear (for the
fears of children show that there may be here a distinct
nervous and mental predisposition to fright, quite apart
from any experience of injury from the object feared — as
when a child I know shrieked at the first touch of some
unportentous fur, and again at the sight of a miniature dog
of stuffed flannel). With such, it may be in a measure true,
that primus in orbe timor fecit deos ; or, at least, that fear
determines, for the time, the central features of the nearer
divinities. But this is not universally the case. In recon-
structing the mind of the savage, for purposes of science,
students have been tempted to lay too much stress upon
those feelings which (they believe) would dominate them-
selves, were they placed out in wild Nature. But no one
can actually live in some forest or mountain wilderness
without appreciating that there are other things in such a
place than beasts and savages, flood and tornado, avalanche
and lightning. If we leave out of account the exhilaration
of going beneath great trees, or of scrambling along cliffs
and over snow-capped peaks (to which, let us suppose,
the savage is insensible), yet mere sunshine and wind,
exercise and appetite, give a spring and confidence of out-
look, that cannot all be due to our previous confinement
in the city. It would not be at all surprising to find that
the savage often has the resilience of the child, and even in
religion is only exceptionally a prey to dread. His fears are
real and compulsive while they last, but before long give
way to impassivity or action.

The seasonal crises of the year — midsummer, midwinter,
spring — are frequently the occasion of religious celebra-
tions. And these pass readily into saturnalia, in which
there is often not excitement merely, but wild joy. The
general name for such occasions of excess is taken from the
H

98 Psychology of the Religious Life

best known of them all — the old Italian custom com-
memorating, it is said, the ancient and blessed reign upon
earth of the god Saturn. At these true Saturnalia, the
whole population gave itself up to merry-making and in-
dulgence ; everywhere was seen drunkenness ; and, in the
disorder and inversion of common ways, feasts were spread
for the slaves, who were now served by their masters.1 But
this feast of Saturn was not without its kind among other
peoples of the olden world. At the Greek Cronia, widely cele-
brated over Greece, in honour of Cronos and his wife Rhea,
field labourers and masters held a joyous feast together
when the harvest was brought in — a feast which led, at
times, to unbearable license of the slaves. Like it was the
festival of Hermes held in Crete, when slaves fared sump-
tuously while their masters waited on them ; or the festival
at Troezene when slaves played dice with freemen and were
feasted by their lords ; or the Peloria, celebrated by the
Thessalians, in which prisoners were set free, and slaves
and strangers were bidden to tables richly spread and served
by freemen, while the utmost liberty of speech was then
allowed. Like this, too, in many ways was the Babylonian
and Persian festival called the Saccea. At this time slaves
ruled their masters ; and one slave in particular (or, accord-
ing to a different authority, a condemned criminal) was
raised to the royal throne and clothed in the royal robes,
and while the festival lasted he was allowed to live in
luxury, eating, drinking, and making free with the king's
women ; at the close he was stripped and flogged and led to
execution.2 At this Sacaean festival, celebrated wherever
there was a temple of the goddess Anaitis, men and women
passed day and night in drunken wantonness.3 The excesses
of such a festival recall those connected with the worship
of Dionysos and of Cybele, where, with processions and
dramatic shows, there was endless drinking, and frenzied

1 Seneca : Letter XVIII ; Lucian : Saturnalia ; Athenaeus : Deipno-
soph., XIV, 44 f.

2 Athenaeus : Deipnosoph., XIV, 44 f. (639 f.) ; Dio Chrysostom :
Orat. IV, 162 R. 3 Strabo : Geography, XI, 8, 4-5.

The Opposition of Gloom and Cheer 99

and tumultuous shouts ; while women, rushing about with
streaming hair, tore with their teeth the raw flesh of animals.1

To understand better such unbridled times, there should
be recounted from savage life certain festivals more or less
similar to them in their emotion, if not in their actual
conduct.

Among the Iroquois the New Year holidays, which last
for three weeks, are kept with feasting, dances, confession,
and chants of praise.2 The extravagance at a time of the
year not far from this is best seen in the words of a very
early observer : " We witnessed the ceremony on the
twenty-second of February, of this year, 1656," writes the
Jesuit missionary, Father Jean de Quens. " Immediately
upon the announcement of the festival by these public
cries, nothing was seen but men, women, and children,
running like maniacs through the streets and cabins — this,
however, in a far different manner from that of Masquer-
aders in Europe, the greater number being nearly naked,
and apparently insensible to the cold, which is wellnigh un-
bearable to those who are most warmly clothed. Some,
indeed, give no further evidence of their folly, than to run
thus half naked through all the cabins ; but others are
mischievous. Some carry water, or something worse, and
throw it at those whom they meet ; others take the fire-
brands, coals, and ashes from the fire, and scatter them in
all directions, without heeding on whom they fall ; others
break the kettles, dishes, and all the little domestic outfit
that they find in their path."3 The Hos of India, who are
described as being usually gentle of manner and decorous,
hold a religious festival when their granaries are full in
January, and then their character seems, for the time, to
undergo a total change. They drink immoderately of rice
beer, and give vent to the devilry which they say is then in

1 Roscher : Lexikon, 1037 f., 1072, 2252 f. ; Strabo : Geog., X, 3,
7-21 ; Mommsen : Feste der Stadt A then in Altertum, 1898, 354 fi., 428 if.

" E. A. Smith, in Second Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology, for
1880-81 (publ. 1883), pp. 112 ff.

3 Jesuit Relations, ed. Thwaites, XLII, 155 ff.

ioo Psychology of the Religious Life

them. Children revile their parents in gross language, which
is returned to them again ; and in a general suspension of the
usual duties and restraints, the women become like raging
Bacchantes, and the men like beasts. And the Mundaris,
too, hold at this time a festival in which, with less
licentiousness, farm-labourers are feasted by their masters
and are allowed the greatest freedom of address.1 And at
other religious festivals in India, notably at the Holi cele-
bration, not only is all manner of mischief permitted (as
when red or yellow powder is thrown at one another, or
boys squirt red liquid on passers-by), but abusive and
obscene language is then given and received without con-
cern.2 At the Sakti-puja, the Abbe Dubois tells us, men
and women used to eat and drink to excess everything that
is forbidden to a Hindu, even the flesh of the cow ; and all
classes, from Brahmins to Pariahs, mingled in one indis-
criminate orgy of gluttony, intoxication, and lust.3 In
Ashantee the maturity of the yams in September is a
saturnalian time. Theft, intrigue, assault, are committed
with impunity, and the grossest passion and indulgence
then prevail.4 With the Wasuahili of eastern Africa the
opening of the New Year was formerly an occasion of
license. Everyone then did as he pleased ; and if, in settling
some ancient grudge a man was found dead next day, no
questions were asked about it.5 Or again, all ordinary
restraint may be broken through upon some special occa-
sion, as the death of a prominent man. At a funeral cere-
mony in Assofoo, witnessed by Bowdich, there was kept
up for several days a carnival, with much drinking of palm
wine, and firing of guns, and singing and dancing. And

1 Dalton : Descriptive Ethnology of Bengal, 1872, p. 196 f.

2 Wilson : Religion of the Hindus, 1861-62, II, 225 ff., and cf. 240 £f. ;
Monier- Williams : Hinduism, 1880, p. 182 ; Oldfield : Sketches from
Nipal, 1880, II, 341 ; Oman : Brahmans, Theists, and Muslims of India,
1907, pp. 241 ff.

3 Dubois : Hindu Manners, Customs, and Ceremonies, tr. Beauchamp,
1897, pp. 288 ff.

4 Bowdich : Mission from Cape Coast Castle to Ashantee, 1819, p. 274.

6 New : Life, Wanderings, and Labours in Eastern Africa, 1874, p. 65.

The Opposition of Gloom and Cheer i o i

when the King died, he was told, the near members of
the family acted as though insane, bursting forth into the
streets, killing indiscriminately and without punishment.1
And like excesses were common in Hawaii upon the death
of a chief. As soon as he had expired, " the whole neigh-
bourhood exhibited a scene of confusion, wickedness, and
cruelty, seldom witnessed even in the most barbarous
society. The people ran to and fro without their clothes,
appearing and acting more like demons than human beings ;
every vice was practised, and almost every species of crime
perpetrated. Houses were burnt, property plundered, even
murder sometimes committed, and the gratification of
every base and savage feeling sought without restraint " —
a state of affairs which found almost its counterpart among
the Society Islanders at ' mourning.'2

The causes of these outbursts are not always the same.
In some cases, especially among the naive, there seems to be
the far-from-commendable motive that evil is about to be
removed, or has been removed, and consequently it does
not matter how high the score now goes ;3 like the extra-
vagant expense which may precede or come close upon the
clearance of the bankrupt. Again, the joyous excess may
come from the thought that the oncoming period of restraint
will close the opportunities of pleasure, as in the Carnival
preceding Lent — so, carpe diem ! Or it may be but an
emotional rebound from ungrateful limitations ; as of
sailors first ashore. At times, too, and particularly in con-
junction with the season when Nature is coming to fruition,
there often is the feeling of sympathetic union with the
swelling life around — sometimes from the sense that by
excessive indulgence man can assist in bringing on the
fullness of Nature, or again with no more reflection than
lies in those familiar but hidden motives that make so many
men nearer poetry in the spring.

1 Bowdich : Mission from Cape Coast Castle to Ashantee, 1819, p. 288.

2 Ellis : Narrative of a Tour through Hawaii, 1826, p. 148.

3 Cf. Frazer : Golden Bough, 1900, III, 118 f.

IO2 Psychology of the Religious Life

These oscillations of feeling, however, do not seem to be
peculiar to religion ; they are, rather, but the reappearance
there — though often magnified, because religion goes so
deep into character — of the same movements that run
through secular life. The American negro shows the same
poles of feeling both within and without his religion ; the
humour and the pathos of his character but come to the
full in the dark anxiety and the jubilation of the camp-
meeting. And the joyous festival of Purim, when every
Jew was expected to drink until he could no longer dis-
tinguish between the words " cursed be Haman ' and
' blessed be Mordecai," and when a whole community
seemed to have taken leave of its senses, was a festival
exactly like those which have often gone with religion,
and yet it seems to have been a wholly secular feast.1 If
other analogues in secular life, though mild and faded, were
desired, they could still be found upon the night that closes
the Old year and brings in the New, even to-day — reminding
one of that ' Lord of Misrule ' who in England reigned
during the festivities connected with Christmas and New
Year.2

But when instead of the recurrent oscillation between
religious gloom and joy, the individual or the people shows
an abiding inclination to one or the other side, we often
may regard it as but a special instance of the ways of
evolution, wherein features which farther down the scale
are mingled, frequently upon higher levels become distinct
and separate. Instead of the mutually opposing tendencies
working together or in rapid succession in the same person,
different individuals seem now elected to exemplify in rela-
tive isolation the one or the other strain.

It has been pointed out by others that the tendency to
be cheerful or morose is not always to be explained by any
special turn of external fortune. Often there appears to be
some difference in the mental or nervous constitution which

1 Frazer : Golden Bough, 1900, III, 159, 157.

2 Chambers : Book of Days, 1866, II, 741 f.

The Opposition of Gloom and Cheer 103

brings out unlike responses to situations that are like. It
is well known that quite apart from any legitimatejDccasion
for cheer or depression — such as great achievement and
honour, or misfortune to one's self or friends — some men
persistently see things dark or rose-hued. Extreme and
painful instances of the kind are often found among" the
insane, who following some inner prompting, and regardless
of their real condition, may show either exaltation or
melancholy. And for them the whole world may then be
seen consistent with the emotion dominating them : for
the depressed there is nothing but faithlessness and persecu-
tion ; for the opposite type perhaps riches and royal rank.
There is here some inner and undiscovered process, re-
minding us of a similar though often less permanent in-
fluence of certain drugs, some of them stimulant, others
depressant, bringing as the case may be, glorious visions or
horror and black despair. Doubtless these inclinations
which appear thus irresistible in mental disease or as an
effect of drugs are gently present even in mental health.
But the outward occasions of the opposing mood are, with
us, usually strong enough to prevent the appearance of
its opposite, unabated and in sole strength ; thus life for
most men is a mingling of joy with disappointment.

Now it seems probable that whole groups of kindred
people, quite as truly as occasional individuals, have some
such inner determinant of mood. And this would help to
explain the presence of religious gloom among some and
of cheer with others, the almost ethnic displays of sadness
and of hope. For it is evident that with whole orders of a
society the ideal may act mainly as a stimulant, or again as
a depressant ; and the cause must lie, at least in part, in
some difference of the constitution of the human spirit.

If such a difference exists, it must find ample occasion
and encouragement for either gloom or cheer in the very
frame of the Ideal. For this itself, even in the well-balanced
character, at once occasions warring states of mind. The
heights of living are apt both to enhearten and bring de-

IO4 Psychology of the Religious Life

jection. For there is then perceived the Perfect, stretching
on beyond the limits of sight, and calling forward to posses-
sion ; but in the same moment comes the condemning sense
that life has all the while remained far from its true desire.
And moreover, every movement forward seems in its issue
a less distinct attainment of the good than had been hoped ;
so that high-hearted attempt and a sense of partial failure
are bound up in the experience of devotion to the Best.
This noble depression, or tempered exultation, can easily
in less steadied minds pass into a religion that is either
morbid or effervescent. And whole peoples, according to
their disposition, may so regard the Divine that for them
its greatest power will be either check or cheer. It is no
great step from these opposites of feeling to those of flight
from the world, and of cheerful acceptance, which have
already been before us ; and of the far-off and the near Ideal,
which are to come. What is here said of gloom and cheer
may accordingly serve at least to make these other topics
appear less indistinct.

CHAPTER VI

THE SUPPRESSION AND INTENSIFYING OF EMOTION

MAN is not simply impassive or else stirred with emo-
tion ; he comes to recognize emotion itself as some-
thing toward which a hostile or a friendly attitude must be
assumed. A value is thus set upon the stir of feeling, and
men consciously seek to rid themselves of all excitement or
to heighten what they already have. There thus comes
into existence a religious culture directly concerned with
emotion, and more often intended to arouse than to quiet it.

And first of all, the culture of religious feeling is not
something entirely indirect. It would be wrong to say that
certain emotions first come to be regarded as having a place
in divinity, and then are cultivated by the worshipper who
patterns himself after his god. For the cultivation of
emotion appears in the rudest savagery, and seems as primi-
tive as the idea of divinity itself ; and these cultivated
emotions are not themselves copied from the gods, nor
are they felt to be characteristic of the gods. And again,
certain emotions are ascribed to the gods when these
divinities are not regarded as offering a pattern for human
conduct. With this word of warning that we are not
attempting to set forth the order of evolution and to say
that first the qualities are projected into heaven and then
intently sought on earth, we may see what are the feelings
with which divinity is endowed.

The philosophic idea that God is pure Reason, or pure
Intellect, is natural to those who from their own exclusive
interest in thought, regard the intellect as the only part

105

io6 Psychology of the Religious Life

of us that has real worth. But this view has taken no deep
hold upon the unspoiled man. With him, the plain human
feelings, often strengthened and become heroic, have as
central a place in the divine life as have perception or
intelligence. Zeus is represented as deeply interested in
the welfare of those dear to him, angered by Olympian plots,
petulant with his spouse, in love with many a woman both
mortal and immortal. Agni of the Vedas is a kindly god ;
I/a, Sarasvati, and Mahi are " comfort-giving goddesses,
they who do not fail."1 The Jehovah of the Hebrews is
jealous of the Gentile gods, and angry toward those of his
people who turn to them. But he is also merciful ; he does
not deal with us according to our sins, nor reward us accord-
ing to our iniquities ; he will not continue his anger for
ever. As a father hath compassion on his sons, so Jehovah
hath compassion on us.2 Some of the gods of ancient
Mexico were felt to delight in the agonies of tortured victims.
And among the gods of other primitive peoples we find all
shades of the emotional life from the fiercest passion to
indifference.

But turning from the feelings of the gods to the feelings
that were deliberately sought by the worshipper, one can-
not but think, first of all, of that Pity which is so prominent
with the Buddhist — pity so deep and wide that it reaches
not only from man up to the very gods, but downward
from man to all the forms of life below. As early as 400 A.D.
the Chinese traveller Fahian found, at Pa^aliputra, hospitals
for the sick and poor, especially for the strangers who came
there for religious festivals. And philanthropy was early
widened until it became a compassion for all forms of
life; even the animal hospital being early known. Part
of the equipment of the disciple who took the Buddhist
vows was, along^with the bowl for alms, and the rosary, a
sievejthrough which the drinking water should be strained,
lest even insect life should be destroyed.3 Among certain

1 Vedic Hymns, I, 13 9 (XLVI, 8) ; V, 5, 8 (XLVI, 377).

2 Psalm CHI; cf. Briggs : Book of Psalms, 1907, p. 324 f.
2 tie la Saussaye : Manual, Engl. tr., 1891, pp. 609, 620 f.

Suppression and Intensifying of Emotion 107

sects of the Orient, however, the master virtue was not so
much pity as an emotion more akin to love. In a portion
of the literature of the East there is presented a religious
idea called Bhakti, an affectionate devotion which is neither
knowledge nor external action. The forms of this love, or
devotion, include, beside peaceful contemplation and slavish
submission, the more clearly affectionate forms — friendship,
childlike attachment, and the fiery love as between man
and woman.1 The question that has been raised, whether
the conception of Bhakti is not of Christian origin,2 need
not concern us here, because the thought of Bhakti itself,
whether original or adopted, shows in either case a respon-
siveness to an ideal that stands in contrast to that spirit
which regards all feeling as an earthy clog upon the soul.

The West, with its greater respect for woman and for
her love, has in general been less fearful than have the
higher religions of the Orient, of admitting a passionate
affection and not a mere amor intellectualis as a means of
union with divinity. In Christianity the Love that is made
to lie in the very heart of God himself, as revealed in^his
Son, is the foundation-virtue for all his worshippers :
" Now abideth faith, hope, love, these three ; and the
greatest of these is love."3 " This is my commandment,
that ye love one another as I have loved you."4 " We
know that we have passed out of death into life, because
we love the brethren."5 And it is certain that in the West,
where the forces that tend to dissolve society are so strong,
and men, as compared with the common mass of the Orient,
seem to be for the most part more self-reliant, more in-
dividual— in the West especially there was urgent need
that the binding force of love should thus receive encourage-
ment.

But in speaking of the cultivation of feeling ^we ought
not to overlook the rare occurrence in religion of the very
opposite trend — where the ideal character is entirely with-

1 de la Saussaye, p. 646. z Ibid., p. 658. 3 i Corinthians, XIII, 13.
4 John, XV, 12. s j john) m> I4-

io8 Psychology of the Religious Life

out feeling, and where the aim is to approach as far as
possible that philosophic ideal of a passionless existence,
which, as was said, takes no general hold of men. In the
religion of the Bhagavadgita, pure indifference is given the
highest praise. To the divinity none is hateful, none dear ;
and he is highest who thinks alike about friends and enemies,
about the good and the sinful.1 And again, " The wise
look upon a Brahmawa possessed of learning and humility,
on a cow, an elephant, a dog, and a Svapaka " — one of the
very lowest caste — " as alike."2 Yet even here there is no
entire consistency ; for the true follower is expected to be,
not indifferent in all ways, but to be " intent on the welfare
of all beings " and to hope for " Brahmic bliss." There is
to be indifference in the Ideal but not to the Ideal. Indeed,
the divinity declares himself to be " dear above all things '
to the man of knowledge, " and he is dear to me." Many
are noble, " but the man possessed of knowledge is deemed
by me to be my own self."3 Such an ideal is perhaps unim-
passioned, but it is only waveringly unfeeling — unfeeling
and indifferent to all the particulars of actual life, but not
indifferent to the eternal One.

But in addition to fostering some special quality in the
life of feeling, as a permanent good, there appears in religion
the thought that the divine presence in man is manifested
tempestuously, by a lack of the usual control of mind and
body. The Cumaean Sibyl raves as she gives the inspired
word ; her look, her colour change ; her hair becomes
dishevelled, and her bosom heaves with the growing mad-
ness.4 At the temple of the Moon, near Iberia, in the
country of the Albanians in ancient times, there were
sacred attendants, many of whom were thought to be
divinely inspired and to prophesy. And if the holy frenzy
became especially violent in some one of them, driving
him away to the woods, he was caught and bound with
sacred fetters, and maintained sumptuously for all the

1 Bhagavadgita, VI (VIII, 68). 2 Ibid., V (VIII, 65).

3 Ibid., VII (VIII, 75). 4 Vergil : /Eneid, VI, 46 ff.

Suppression and Intensifying of Emotion 109

year ; and at a festival in honour of the goddess he, as
having been specially marked by the divinity, was anointed
and sacrificed to her.1 The divinity was believed by the
Gonds of India to come upon man in madness. In Novem-
ber the whole village assembled at the shrine of Ghansyam
Deo, protector of the crops. There, after a sacrifice of
fowls, or a pig, the god descends upon the head of one of
the worshippers, who is suddenly seized with a kind of
fit, and, after staggering about, rushes off into the wildest
parts of the jungle. Men are sent to bring him back, lest
he die a maniac and starving ; and even after his return
he does not regain his senses for a day or two.2 And in the
initiatory rites of the Winnebagoes, by which men and
women gain the mysterious power known as ' medicine/
this power is not assured them until, in the midst of the
rites, the candidates, struck down as by an electric shock,
fall on their faces, their limbs extended, their muscles rigid
and quivering.3

Often, under this conviction that excitement is a sign
of the supernatural, if not of divine power, there comes a
deliberate arousal of stormy feeling, as a special means of
communion with the gods. And to this end various ex-
citants are employed.

Among such excitants, intoxicating drinks are often
used. Indians in Virginia initiated their choicest young
men by carrying them to the woods and confining them
there for several months, and giving them as their only
nourishment a drink made from certain poisonous roots.
By this they became " stark, staring mad," and were kept
in this raving condition eighteen or twenty days. Gradu-
ally they were permitted to return to sanity, but not until
they had been brought back to the village " still wild and
crazy," and tested to make sure that all remembrance of
their former life had been destroyed. Such complete erasure

1 Strabo, XI, 4, 7.

2 Punjab Notes and Queries, II, 54 (Dec., 1884).

3 Fletcher, in Schoolcraft : Archives of Aborig. Knowl., 1860, III, 287.

no Psychology of the Religious Life

of the old was thought to render them especially fit for
public service.1 Tribes in the Gulf States and in the region
thereabout have made a somewhat similar use of the
' black drink,' which produces nervous disturbance, and a
disordered imagination, connected by the Indians with
spiritual power.2 In Peru, the priests whose special office
it was to converse with the gods of towns or provinces, were
accustomed to produce in themselves ecstasy by a narcotic
drink called ' tonca ' ; and while in this ecstatic state it was
believed they were inspired.3

Everyone knows of the drunkenness from wine so pro-
minent in the worship of Dionysos. And farther east,
drinks were an important part of worship. Pliny tells of a
plant found on the banks of the Indus, which, in drink,
brought on delirium and strange visions ; and of an infusion
of ' theangelis/ which gave to the Magi powers of divina-
tion.4 And from many other sources we know that in
Persia and in India much use was made of a drink called
Haoma or Soma, offered to the gods and partaken also by
men, and honoured until it became itself an object of
adoration. It is placed in honour along with the sacred
Word and the holy Zarathustra ! Zarathustra's wife
prayed him for the " good narcotic " that she might think
and speak and act according to the law.5 And again,
' Homage unto Haoma, because all other drinks are
attended with Aeshma, the fiend of the wounding spear,"
but the drinking of Haoma is attended with divinities of
blessing and of heavenly order.6 Its holy power of virtue
and inspiration was praised also in a special hymn which
recounts all the wonders it does for men.7

But drugs used for religious excitation need not be taken
in the form of drink. Roman (or Ramon) Pane, " a poor

1 Beverley : History of Virginia (repr. of ed. of 1722), 1855, pp. 162 ff.

2 Bureau of Amer. Ethnol., Bulletin 30, 1907, p. 150.

3 Rivero and Tschudi : Peruvian Antiquities, Engl. by Hawks, 1853,
p. 184.

* Nat. Hist., XXIV, 102. 5 Din Yast, V, 15 (XXIII, 267 f. and note).
6 Ashi Yast, II, 5 (XXIII, 271). » Horn Yast (XXXI, 231 ff.).

Suppression and Intensifying of Emotion 1 1 1

anchorite of the order of St. Jerome ' and possessed of
knowledge of certain Indian ways, tells us that, when one
is sick, the doctor to whom the sick man is taken must
snuff " a certain powder, called cohoba, up his nose, which
makes him drunk, that he knows not what he does." In
this condition the priest says many extravagant things,
which the Indians believe is his conversation with the spirits
who are telling him how the sickness came about. This
' cohoba ' was perhaps tobacco,1 and again was used in
special rites to these same spirits. Here a branched cane
was clapped to the nostrils, and a mass of the powder in-
haled, until the worshippers were " beside themselves,"
and uttered words " which none of our people understand."3
But there were other forms of drugging which were re-
garded by the Indians as means of communication with the
spiritual world. At initiation into an order in Guiana,
which had to do with religion, or at least with sorcery, the
candidate was dosed to extremity with tobacco juice, since
tobacco was esteemed a sacred plant by them as by other
Indians.3 The Iroquois believed they could not gain the
ear of the Great Spirit unless their petitions were sent up
with a cloud of burning tobacco4 — whose virtue as incense
in prayer was doubtless suggested by the intoxication of its
thick fumes and their employment for divination and in-
spired dreams.6 The custom here was in many respects
like that of the Scythians in one of their purification rites :
gathered in a close-drawn tent of felt, on the floor of which
were red-hot stones, they threw hemp seed upon these,
while the men inhaled the thickening fumes until they
fairly shouted in their intoxication.6 This narcotic effect

1 See the quotation from Oviedo, in Wilson : Prehistoric Man, 1865,

PP- 323 f-

z In Life of Columbus, by his Son ; Pinkerton's Voyages, 1812, XII,
85 and 79 ; cf. the powdered ' curupa ' and the flowers of the ftoripondio
used by the Omaguas to produce extraordinary visions, spoken of by
Condamine, in Pinkerton's Voyages, XIV, 226.

3 Edw. Bancroft : Natural History of Guiana, 1769, p. 316,

4 Morgan : League of the Iroquois, 1851, p. 164.

5 Wilson : Prehistoric Man, 1865, pp. 315 f., 323 f,

6 Herodotus, IV, 73 ff., and cf. I, 202.

H2 Psychology of the Religious Life

of hemp, or hashish, and of opium, is still sought by the
Persian dervishes, who regard as holy the ecstasy produced.1
Extreme stimulation by drugs is thus, upon the lower
stages of religion, quite widely valued as a means of ap-
proach to the world of spirits. The effect of these stimu-
lants, which to us seems something natural and physiological,
appeared to these religionists to be mysterious and super-
natural. The life of divinity was felt to be present in the
plant or fruit ; and by taking this into his own body, the
worshipper became ' possessed ' of the spiritual power there
resident. Indeed, it is conceivable that the custom of
eating the divinity in animal or human form2 in order to
obtain spiritual power or protection may have had, if not
its origin, at least its great encouragement, in the illumina-
tion which came of partaking of intoxicating plants. The
exciting influence here is pointed and unmistakable, and is
at once recognized by early man as a supernatural mark
of the plant ; and a high and mysterious influence is felt to
be transferred from the plant to the man into whom the
plant has entered. From this, by analogy, the belief could
easily be strengthened that any spirit in animals, too,
whether divine or demonic, could similarly be received by
him who ate. But however this may be, the fact is clear
that from various vegetable drugs some vision was caught
of a strange world ; the seal of reality was given to a
region quite apart from the one habitual to the eyes. It
is not then surprising that the savage, and even those far
higher than the savage, should regard these devices as im-
portant aids to worship. They aided reverence or com-
munication by their exciting power, for this excitement was,
by preparation and intent, given a direction toward the
world of spirits. And in return, the associations, the actual
contents which the mind received in the excitement, as well
as the mere stir itself, sealed the experience as religious.

1 Tylor : Primitive Culture, 1903, II, 418 ff. ; cf. Bastian : Der Mensck
in der Geschichte, 1860, II, 152 ff., for a general view of the use of nar-
cotics in worship, divination, magic, etc.

2 See, e.g., Frazer : Golden Bough, 1900, II, 318 ff.

Suppression and Intensifying of Emotion \ 1 3

And doubtless in some similar way we might find a crude
and sorry reasonableness in other practices which seem to
us at a pole directly opposite to real religion. The obscene
rites which Herodotus records in connection with Baby-
lonian worship,1 and which from other sources are known
to have been connected with worship in many lands — these
were viewed as means to a near approach to the divinity
through those who were her representatives in the flesh.
There is a hidden idea of sacrifice here, of offering what is of
value to the worshipper and seems to be desired of the god
or goddess. But such rites may be regarded as, in part at
least, rites of excitation and of communion,2 especially when,
as sometimes happens, the licentiousness is permitted only
after a period of prolonged denial. At these strange occa-
sions of emotional storm, coming, as they often did, in the
temple and in the very presence of divinity, it must have
seemed to many of the time impious to look too critically,
or to regard them as anything unholy. These unseemly
methods are neither in their savage theory nor in their
actual psychic results, entirely unlike the use of drugs which
we have just considered.

Nor are they entirely unlike the long-continued dancing
and leaps which so frequently have a place among the in-
ducements of religious fervour. The importance of the
dance in the rites of the American Indians is generally
known — one need but mention the Bull, or Buffalo, dance
of the Mandans3 and related tribes, the Corn dance of the
Iroquois, the Ghost dance which spread so remarkably from
the Paiutes, and the many dances named from Snake and
Sun and Scalp and Calumet.4 But dances are by no means
confined to American soil or to exactly such occasions. In
Guiana the priest or sorcerer was prepared for his office by

1 Herodotus, I, 199.

2 For an entirely different view of the motives in this feature of religion,
see the chapter on the subject in Sumner : Folkways, 1907.

3 Vividly described by Catlin : North American Indians, 1842, I,
164 ff.

4 Bureau Amer. Ethnol., Bulletin 30, 1907, pt. I, pp. 381 f., 491 f.

114 Psychology of the Religious Life

violent dancing and fasting and drugging, continued over
several days ; when he fell to the ground as dead, he was
artificially revived, and the rite continued with such severity
that the mental and nervous disturbance in him was extreme. 1
And among the Alfurus of Celebes, wild waving of arms and
dancing and leaping by the priests, in successive shifts day
and night for many days, were part of the means and outer
evidence of the presence of the god ; until at the end the
head priest fell senseless and as though dead.2 The mental
effect of such movements of the body upon the actor and
the spectator is most marked, especially when there is
added to the native influence of these movements the effect
of a strained effort of the mind to surpass its common limits,
and of a sympathetic crowd all bent upon receiving some
influx from a higher source. Then strong men fall down
as dead, overpowered by the spirit for whom the rites are
celebrated ; and in the tumult the limits are no longer felt
which divide common life from the supernatural. Stripped
of its barbarity and softened, the nobler elements of these
older methods have been continued in the solemn move-
ments of the choral dance, in the stately march, in the
rhythm of music which carries the body quietly and uncon-
sciously into the music's cadence. The silent effect of
mere recurrence which is so potent a feature in the dance
may be felt when movement is no longer markedly present
— in the refrain of the hymn, or in the impressive repetition
in the sacred litany.3

Thus when peoples become more civil, they either refine
or cast away entirety the religious instruments which
savagery employs. Yet they do not cease to seek excite-
ment as a means of approach to God. The unsettling in-
fluence of continued solitude, especially when to it are
joined fasting and want of sleep, has already been pointed
out ; but there are effective means to accomplish much the

1 Meiners : Geschichte der Religionen, 1807, II, 162.

2 Bastian : Der Mensch, 1860, II, 145.

3 E.g. the refrains in various parts of the Zend-Avesta ; and in the
Book of the Dead, XV, and LXXI.

Suppression and Intensifying of Emotion 115

same end, without hermitage or privation. Great assem-
blies, with singing and exhortation, are well-known methods
of arousing feeling, especially in connection with ' revivals '
of religion. Often there are evident proofs of the pitch to
which the excitement here may run — uncontrollable shout-
ing, violent bodily movements (giving us the popular terms
' Quaker ' and ' Shaker '), passing often into a state of
complete insensibility. And one of the notable features of
such meetings, and an evidence of their power, is that
persons who feel hatred or contempt for t,he wild be-
haviour of those about them, and who are in a frame of
mind far from reverent, may be utterly unable to keep
themselves from the wildest extravagance.1 The prostra-
tions and impressive inner experiences which occur at the
religious gatherings of savages as well as among more ad-
vanced people are evidence that such seizures are not con-
fined to any one religion. Thus it is apparent that the rise
of religious feeling is not wholly dependent either on society
or on solitude ; but can be brought to pass in many ways.
Doubtless there are temperaments that are most easily
aroused by the direct and present influence of companions,
while others find themselves resistant to such contagion
and can best concentrate their thought upon the unseen
when all alone. Especially when the intellectual element
becomes stronger and the revelation is nobler, the illumina-
tion seems more apt to come to the solitary. There is no
suggestion of the revival excitement of the crowd, in the
Book of the Monk of Evesham, or in the Revelation of St.
John, or in the writings of Swedenborg. " Be much alone,"
said Buddha to his disciples ; and the great enlightenment
is said to have come to him in solitude, under the sacred
tree, as it first came to Mohammed upon a lonely mountain,
or to Moses far away, watching the flocks ofjjethro. The
great leaders of religion are reached in solitude ; the
followers are more stirred by the company of men.

1 For a number of instances see Davenport : Primit. Traits in Relig.
Revivals, 1905, pp. 79 f., 84, 150, 154, 226.

1 1 6 Psychology of the Religious Life

But the ' revival ' itself is by no means a simple matter ;
and cannot be fully understood by viewing it as a mere
device for attaining communion through tempestuous
feeling ; it is not all a deliberate means, it is also with
many a natural expression of the religious life. Such a life,
rarely maintaining a constant level, is apt to have its ebb
and flow ; and thus the revival is not alone the stimulant
for the restoration of the spiritually ' dead/ but it is in
part the unpremeditated expression of a return-wave of
feeling. In the revival we have feeling artificially worked
up ; and also feeling working itself up and out. Thus
we may see feeling and emotion, not simply as a means,
nor as an end or ideal. It is now a spontaneous utterance
or expression of the deep and hidden movements of the
mind. In addition to the various forms of expression
already seen, there are some further modes of expressing
emotion to which we should perhaps now attend.

CHAPTER VIL

THE WIDER CONNECTIONS OF FEELING

THE utterance of emotion in religion may occur in many
ways, and by no means appears only in what is called
'emotionalism.' The stir of religious life may often be
seen in a quickened and redirected intellectual interest,
moving toward underlying ends that are permanent ;
or it may appear in more generous and energetic practical
activity ; or in a closer attachment to the ecclesiastical
exercises of religion.

It seems to be true that with us emotionalism in religion
is often characteristic of those sects that disparage cere-
monial— as if there were a repugnance between ritual and
excitement. Perhaps more than a single cause is here at
work ; but explanation is near when we remember that
ceremonial implies a certain law and order. It stands, at
least with us, although not always with the savage, for
decorum and a kind of courtly etiquette, having respect
for due forms. There is here a restraint upon impulsive
expression, and this restraint becomes irksome to those
whose religious feelings seek free play. But ritual itself is,
for some, just the fitting symbol and expression of their
feeling, giving it a visible form which is at once its life and
its restraint. The very moderation of great ceremonial
serves not only as a quiet and strong excitant," but brings
with it a true katharsis of religious^feeling. The\motion is
repeatedly aroused and drawn away before it mounts so
high as to sweep all continence aside. The stormier ex-
pression is less common among ritualists therefore, not

117

1 1 8 Psychology of the Religious Life

alone because the passionate have come out from among
them, but because the impressive ceremonial by its order
can school and repress wildness.

But in viewing the expression of religious feeling it would
be impossible to overlook the connection of it with art.
Indeed, ceremonial which often begins in magic, soon drops
this character, and looks to the expressiveness of the act.
And into this there soon enters the element of beauty. The
fair appearance which seems so appropriate to all that is
connected with the service of divinity is our mute testimony
to the impression which God makes upon the heart. Beauty
is our name for that which in the outer object fascinates the
spirit, but which cannot well be classed as Truth or as Good-
will. And when God is regarded as the sum of all perfections
it becomes natural to speak of the Divine Beauty, and to
supplement the sincerity and the benevolence of our service
to God, by making all that is offered him, whether it be of
act or of object, to have the grace of Art. The words that
are uttered in the service, then, must have fitness of form ;
they must have dignity, as well as truth. The pleasure of
verse and of music and of stately movement is thus a free
decoration of sacred speech ; they testify to the feeling
that is joined with the ideas. The solemn procession and
the rich symbols carried, the rare vestments, the incense,
the noble figures stained in glass, the paintings and chiselled
forms upon the walls, the massive temple itself into which
may have gone the genius of generations — these are among
the modes in which humanity expresses its devotion to the
unseen. All that on earth seems close to beauty is fitly
gathered into the service of the church, not only to stamp
upon men's hearts the image of the Divine, but to express
the depth of feeling with which man pays his vows to
the Ideal. No man can paint or sing or build eminently
what he does not value. And since religion is the very
sphere in which we state what for us has supreme worth, it
is also the great occasion for the creation of beauty. In
the cathedrals of England and the Continent, in the paint-

The Wider Connections of Feeling 119

ings of Italy, in the temples of ancient Rome and Athens,
in the great religious songs of Homer and of the North,
reverence shows itself to be a nurse and mother of art.
Thus all that art produces in the service of religion —
whether it be in literature, or music, or painting, or archi-
tecture— may be viewed as a part of the expression which
men have given of their religious feeling.

But as in art, so in other regions, it is impossible nicely
to separate the feelings that are religious from those that
are of the world. And the likeness and connection between
religious and secular feelings is shown not only in the fact
thc.t the feelings that men have toward God are the very
same feelings, though enlarged and purified, which they
have toward the most significant of mundane things ; but
also, in that the self-same functions which the feelings
have in religion, they are found to have also in earthly
affairs. The state, the family, the ordinary intercourse with
men, become, each in its own measure, centres of activities
in which feeling can be viewed either as an outward evidence
of what is underneath, or as an inner hidden spring, or a
temporary expedient, or a permanent ideal. In the value
attached to patriotism as a constant sentiment, or to
affection in the family, we have the counterpart of the value
s*t on religious feeling. And the needs of the state are the
frequent occasion of devices to stir men to the depths.
The celebration of its special anniversaries with pomp
and circumstance, the outer honours attached to its officials,
the suggestion of power and beauty in its public buildings,
are ways of influencing and expressing the sentiments
grouped around earthly government. The tempests of
sectarian strife are paralleled by the clash of parties, all
true and loyal it may be to the one rule, according to their
light, but each profoundly suspicious of the integrity and
intelligence of its rivals. Especially in America does the
' revival ' find a distant analogue in the ' campaign ' with
its elaborate machinery for arousing and keeping awake an
interest in the party programme. But under it all there is

1 20 Psychology of the Religious Life

often in men a devotion to the State, a readiness to give up
all and defend its honour even to the death, a readiness for
the still more difficult sacrifice that goes with lifelong
publicity — which makes it not wholly unworthy to com-
pare the feelings of patriotism with those of religion.

But even in more minute details the connection between
religious and secular feeling appears. The contagious
character of religious excitement, where men, though un-
convinced, may be carried along powerless as in a flood, is
also present at times of financial panic, or in political fury
like that of the French Revolution. And the belief that
religious emotionalism springs from a general readiness to im-
pulsive violence and disorder, apart from religion, gains some
support if a recent student is correct who believes that the
counties of Kentucky which have been the seat of great
revivals have also been the scene of unusually frequent
lynching.1 As we go to still more primitive life, we find,
too, that the means which are employed for stirring religious
feeling are also used for purposes that do not clearly have a
religious character. The Mandrucus of Brazil discovered
murderers by dreams brought on through narcotic drinks ;
while certain Indians of California gave narcotics to their
children in order that througji them a knowledge might be
had of the movements of the enemy. And in a similar way,
when the Darien Indians wished to find hidden treasure
they used certain seeds to bring on delirium in children,
that from these some clue might be obtained.2 The secular
parallel to uses that often have religious significance is ako
found in a practice of the ancient Persians : " It is their
custom," writes Herodotus, " to consult upon affairs of
greatest moment when they are drunk. But on the follow-
ing day when they are sober" — rare prudence! — "the
master of the house where the council was held lays before
them the decision they had reached. And now if in sobriety,

1 Davenport : Primit. Traits in Relig. Revivals, 1905, pp. 301 ff.
* Tylor : Primitive Culture, 1903, II, 417. Maury : La magie et
I'astrologie, 1864, p. 425, note.

The Wider Connections of Feeling 121

too, they favour it, the plan is finally adopted ; otherwise
they lay it aside." At times, however, with the Persians,
the order is reversed : a preliminary decision reached
soberly is reviewed in wine.1 Under the mellowing in-
fluence of beer the ancient Germans, likewise, opened their
hearts to one another and discussed affairs of family or of
state ; but the judgments so arrived at had to be reviewed
subsequently in the light of common day.2 The fantastic
as well as the more common uses which excitement has
found in the service of religion seem thus to be but part
of a wide and general application of practices that have
commended themselves to men whenever matters of im-
portance were afoot.

But if the place which feeling holds in religion is not
peculiar to religion, are the feelings themselves at all dis-
tinctive ? It has already been indicated that the discrimina-
tion between religious and secular feelings is exceedingly
difficult. It is probable that there is no important differ-
ence in their grosser quality, though there may often be in
their strength and finer shading, since the religious feelings
are those of the weightiest and noblest secular association,
but slightly changed by being directed now to situations
that exceed the bounds of common life. The goodness, the
beauty, the intelligence, found in God arouse the kind of
sentiment that is stirred in us by goodness, beauty, and
intelligence found on earth. The feelings of religion gain
the peculiarity they seem to have, not so much from their
own inherent quality, as from the total mental state in which
they come. For this total mental state is distinctive, but
mainly because its centre is occupied by objects that belong
to a higher realm. Religion is a redirection of the highest
feelings, but toward an uncustomary, a supreme end. And
religion in employing such terms as ' King,' and ' Lord,'
and ' Friend,' and ' Son,' and ' Father ' in our relation to
the Supreme, does thereby testify that the feelings which

1 Herodotus, I, 133.

8 Tacitus : Ger mania, XXII.

122 Psychology of the Religious Life

appear in human relations are also, at their best, appro-
priate to the Divine.

f,-~In its higher forms, however, religion makes use, not of
all feelings indiscriminately, but preferably of those that
have proved to be best for the larger social needs. The
selfish feelings, for example, the vindictive, and some of
the more passionate emotions which are freely admitted as
proper to the religions of less cultivated people are utterly
condemned by those of better training. The personal profit
of God's service is not without its emotional appeal far
above savagery. But when it is seen that the feelings of
self-seeking can usually take care of themselves, while the
generous sentiments in comparison look colourless and
stunted, religion in search of the ideal of character and of
life feels especial need of encouraging the generous, the
unselfish emotions. If men of themselves came already rich
in these, and were in danger of losing character by lack of
interest in their private fortune, high religion might find
more occasion for laying emphasis upon this other side.
It is only rarely that we find instances where excessive
generosity, unbalanced by provision for replenishing one's
own private store, seems to have left the personal character
bloodless and no longer able to be of help.

The absence of one particular feeling from the company
of religious sentiments is notable. In sacred literature
humour comes but seldom, as if religion would not permit
even historical narrative that came into the sphere of
piety to be dealt with otherwise than soberly. Yet it is
not entirely wanting. There has been a recent attempt to
make probable a smile behind some of the sayings of Jesus.
And grim humour is perhaps in the exclamation of the
Koran : " Give to the hypocrites the glad tidings that for
them is grievous woe ! "* Perhaps, too, there is some
appreciation of the absurdity of the situation when the
false emissaries played their trick on Joshua — making
themselves dusty and tattered and torn, having but a

1 Ch. IV (VI, 91).

The Wider Connections of Feeling 123

remnant of provisions dry and mouldy, as though they had
come an interminable journey, when in fact they were
from the very neighbourhood.1 There seems to be a touch
of humour, too, in that incident in the Confucian canon
where a wife anxious to do honour to her deceased lord
plans with her chief officer to bury with her husband a living
person to do him service in the lower world. Having
perhaps some misgiving, however, they tell the deceased
man's brother of their plan, who offers the opinion that
such an action would be inappropriate. But if it must be
done, he adds dryly, the wife and chief officer of the deceased
are undoubtedly the proper ones to be sacrificed, since they
alone could give the attendance due in illness or in need ;
whereupon the wife and chief officer apparently lost interest
in the plan.2 The scandalous discomfiture of the Olympian
gods, that must have been greeted with loud laughter by
earlier hearers of the Homeric tales, came unpleasantly to
more sensitive Athenian ears. These earlier tales bring one
nearer to the more primitive religious feeling, where, as
with children, the passage from gravity to laughter is
lightly made. Chamisso tells us that in an interlude of the
great festival of the ' Morai ' which he attended, on one of
the Hawaiian Islands, there was used a fierce-looking idol,
decked with feathers and real teeth. When two youths
brought the image closer to Chamisso for him to see it,
he began to feel the teeth of the god ; whereupon one of
the young men gave the figure a sudden movement that
made it swallow Chamisso 's hand ; he quickly drew his
hand back, and then arose immoderate laughter. And in
general the gaiety which prevailed at this festival, he says,
would have made the gaiety of a European masquerade
seem like a funeral.3 Such conduct, and especially such
use of a sacred image, would hardly have seemed fitting
even for an interlude with peoples more advanced. Thus
later we find that fun and religion are regarded as anti-

1 Joshua, IX. 2 Li m, II, 2, 2, 15 (XXVII, :8i f.).

3 Reise um die Welt, in Chamisso's Werke, 1852, I, 174 S.

1 24 Psychology of the Religious Life

podes ; and the natural attitude is well reflected in the
Koran, where nothing worse can be said of the Infidels than
that they " have taken their religion for a play and a
sport." " For them is a drink of boiling water, and grievous
woe for that they have misbelieved."1 After it has dis-
appeared from the human side of religion, laughter, which
is a sign close to humour, may still be attributed to the
gods, as a natural indication of the divine superiority and
secure power, in Virgil and Homer and the Jewish scriptures.
There are several reasons for this gradual suppression of
humour and play in religion that has become refined. In
the first place its increasing rarity may be distantly con-
nected with the passing of cruelty in the gods. For humour
is a pale and altered shade of cruelty, and is kindred to
repartee, to teasing, and to all that enjoyment which de-
pends on the degradation or discomfiture of others. The
savage takes pleasure in torture and actual killing ; and he
often believes his gods to take like pleasure. The civilized
man prefers that suffering appear rather in mimic repre-
sentation or tale, than actually ; and especially that it
should seem to be required in the defence and vindication
of some great purpose. But the child and the savage and
the barbarian of the cities, wanting such compunctions,
will gladly look upon agony present to the eyes. And as
tragedy is sublimated suffering, so humour is suffering still
many degrees more attenuated in that in every way the
situation is of less moment and the conceived suffering of
others is most mild. But in any event humour, even when
we call it kindly, seems to have affinity with the ungenerous
emotions and tends to be suppressed with them. And
moreover, when circumstances are heavy on the mind,
humour can occur only in the rarest characters. Lincoln,
bowed down with care when a nation's very existence was
in the balance, yet with his comic anecdotes, is an instance
the very opposite of typical. Religion, which is the realm
where decisions of eternal weight are made, when life and

1 Ch. VI (VI, 123).

The Wider Connections of Feeling 125

death in this world and in the next are being settled, is
no occasion for most men to joke. Even the relief that
religion brings to the downcast soul is too fateful to be
taken lightly. And thus humour, in which there is a certain
irresponsibility, an aloofness from the most useful sym-
pathetic bond, a feeling of security in one's self and of
superiority to the petty trials of other men, is inevitably
crowded into the background by the solemnity and sense
of dependence and community of fortune present in great
religion. Where in the commoner states of mind we can
enjoy the incongruity and tangle and discord just because
it is so petty, religion sees the incongruity of life as mo-
mentous. The discord has now become sin and evil, and
there is no place for play. Laughter here would be as in-
appropriate as in a court when sentence of death or liberty
was being read ; or when men appeared before their
sovereign, or were in the charge of battle.

\ .

>'•'• •

But in noting the suppression of humour in high religion
one is already close to another question. Of what effect
and influence is feeling ; and of what value is it in religion ?

Upon this men show the widest possible conflict of opinion,
feeling being viewed by some as the chief if not the sole
constituent of religion ; while others deny it any rightful
place. Such divergence is, in the main, not to be changed
by science in its present state ; for the question involved
is not entirely one of fact, but of intention — a dispute not
so much whether feeling has been and still is actually
present in religion, as whether it should be permitted to
remain, or should now be frowned upon as having outlived
its use. The ideal religion for those who would discounten-
ance feeling is of the intellect, or of unimpassioned pur-
pose, or of these conjoined. The very interest of the problem
urges one to examine closely the place of feeling in reverent
life.

And first of all, feeling affects deeply not our conduct
only, but our beliefs. The influence of feeling has been the

126 Psychology of the Religious Life

topic of several chapters that have preceded. There it has
perhaps been made clear that men vary immeasurably in
their emotional plan and elevation — in their feelings towards
themselves, their fellows, and the world at large, viewing
these with attraction and repulsion, and with a spirit en-
livened or subdued. And these differences of attitude do
not remain without effect, but have important conse-
quences in conduct and in the ideals to which men give
allegiance and which control them. The man that feels
nothing but revulsion toward himself, or toward both him-
self and other men, who despairs of goodness and would
renounce the world, will have his manner of conduct in-
fluenced by this feeling. His morality will not be the same
as that of the sympathetic. But not only this ; his heaven,
if he look to one, will be a different heaven ; his God, a
different God. The great objects of a religion are thus given
form and colour by the feeling of men, especially in great
groups. It need not, of course, make these influences seem
less potent if we say that they are for the most part not felt
as shaping the ideal, but rather as shaped entirely by it.

But in speaking of the feelings as a determinant of one's
view and conduct, it is possible to go still deeper. For
feeling is not simply a mould of thought and action ; it enters
more intimately into their constitution. For few would
regard a mind as religious, though it were penetrating and
panoramic even of the divine realm, if it were wholly with-
out preference, without appreciation. The eyes that looked
with indifference on all things would be without morality,
for right and wrong would be alike, as for the Brahm
described by Emerson ; such eyes would be without loyalty
to the Best, for there would be no best, no worst. The
value of things may be to some extent conventional and due
to a settled judgment that has grown up among men about
us, whose opinion we coldly imitate. But the settled judg-
ment, for example, that { men are more important than
stocks and stones, and that honour and truth are worthier
than lies and treachery, would never have come about if

The Wider Connections of Feeling 127

there had nowhere been a difference of feeling with regard
to such things. Upon the feelings of liking and dislike
depends preference ; upon preference depends at last the
worth or value which objects shall have. And our regard,
our loyalty, our reverence, are but our expression in most
solemn form of the worth and value which for us lies
somewhere in the universe. These feelings would not of
themselves give us the world of preferences and aversions
which each of us bears with him, since perception and thought
and attention are also needed before we possess this world.
Thus feeling is no more fundamental for seeing the world —
even the world we worship — than is cognition ; but it is
no less fundamental. For interest and attention, which
are so essential for the intellectual view, are only in half
measure processes of pure knowledge ; the other and in-
separable half is feeling. And since the existence of religion
implies at least that some goal or object is in view which
appears to us important or precious beyond all else, we
must regard feeling as part of religion's very essence.
According to its own strength and direction, therefore,
feeling not only alters the apparent form of the ideal
world ; it makes that world appear to us ideal, makes it
most wonderful, strong and real. It is true that the un-
folding of divinity for men must in great measure depend
upon the grade of their intelligence. But this unfolding
depends no less upon the degree of their advance in senti-
ment. But as God's thoughts are felt to be not as our
thoughts, so the ways of his purpose and attachment are
felt to be above ours. The man who is vindictive may
appreciate a god who forgives ; but only because there
is already struggling within the man himself a thwarted
impulse to forgive. If such an impulse had not been felt
by him or by his kindred who help to form his thought,
God would still be for him merciless and vengeful. Emer-
son's thought that we praise what we ourselves lack is no
absolute truth. We praise sincerely only what we half
possess.

128 Psychology of the Religious Life

Thus when even a part of the appearances of religion are
before us, it seems no longer possible (whatever our own
preferences may be) to speak seriously of excluding feeling
from religion. This would be as idle as to expect men to go
through the weightiest secular affairs without emotion —
to remain cool and even-tempered in all crises, impassive
in the presence of genius, of the ocean, or upon some Alpine
pass. For we have seen that the feelings of religion are
peculiar to it neither in their office nor in their intrinsic
character. Certain feelings, such as the emotions of vain-
glory and of humour, are held in less honour amongst the
religious, or are perhaps utterly neglected or expelled.
But those retained are of like quality with the more accept-
able feelings toward parents, friends, and the father-land,
whereto feeling is desired and even cultivated. And
this likeness of quality and function between the religious
and the secular emotions is further shown, in that Art
serves, both here and there, as a common mode of expres-
sing the honour in which the greatest objects are held.

In truth, feeling holds as central a place in religion as
does knowledge or purpose ; for without it any real homage
to the Ideal would be impossible — indeed, there would be
no Ideal, for this itself is born of preference, of feeling.

With this we close our review of the wide work and
character not only of feeling generally, but of certain
special feelings. The commonest human emotions, of self-
regard and self-depreciation, of sympathy with others and
with the world, and of antipathy toward these, are of in-
fluence upon the whole religious system and conception.
They directly give form to the world of reward and punish-
ment, and to the relation of God to men. And f urthermore,
the mind, by its very attention to a more impressive form
of existence, finds itself drawn to opposite poles of feeling :
now honouring and now despising the self ; holding fellow-
men in respect or in contempt ; loving or else hating the
ways and institutions of the world ; viewing the relation

The Wider Connections of Feeling 129

between humanity and the divine, now with excitement and
now with calm, and in particular with gladness or with
sorrow. The very fealty to the Ideal — so intricate is the
character, both of the Ideal and of our loyalty to it — stirs
into life the most contrary emotions, until in their conflict
they rest at fierce tension, or one subdues the other. Ex-
amples of this conflict have been seen within many single
religions, and as one religion stands opposed to another.
There has thus been an attempt to explain the presence of
the different feelings themselves ; and furthermore, to show
their interaction and to what they lead — to show how
human nature is moved when facing the highest ; and how
its contrasting feelings in their turn cast their own light
and colour over this higher realm. And so in its endless
variety of shading and source and consequence, feeling,
which is in the end rejected by some as a hindrance, comes
to be viewed by many as an evidence and medium of vital
intercourse between man and the world of spirit, and in
strange ways is sought and intensified.

But occasionally there has appeared, in observing this
amazing diversity of feeling and of feeling's causes and
effects, another group of facts — of action and of purpose.
Various practices, of ceremonial and other kinds, have been
observed in connection with feeling, either employed to
heighten or control it, or else flowing from it as a spon-
taneous expression. The religious acts thus indirectly
brought to notice must now be examined for their own in-
herent interest.

K

PART II
CONFLICTS IN REGARD TO ACTION

CHAPTER VIII

CEREMONIAL AND ITS INNER SUPPORTS

MANY of the great things of religion come of humble
stock. This is true of its external acts. They
begin in foolish mummery, in all manner of cheap and
childish tricks to reach one's end, and did we not see with
our very eyes what they finally come to, no one could
believe that they furnish the parentage of good. Acts that
are intended to appeal to spirits or gods, if traced back, are
often found to have their historic source in magic, pure and
simple, in spells or charms differing from religious rites
inasmuch as they accomplish their results by their own
inherent though mysterious power and without first in-
fluencing some spiritual being by motives of the mind.
The thought in these lowest rites of magic is often as vague
as is the common idea of luck and its connection with what
it brings. Certain ways of action are felt to be ' lucky ' or
potent, and that is all the agent can say about them. I
shall not attempt to give more than a few illustrations of
the wide extent of such a confidence.

Among the Malays there are recognized ways in which a
man may become a magician ; he must, for example, first
meet the ghost of a murdered man, and this can be accom-
plished by certain mystical acts and incantations.1 In
Australia a man may kill his enemy by secretly pointing
at him with a magic stick and cursing him.2 And similar

1 Skeat : Malay Magic, 1900, pp. 60 f.

2 Spencer and Gillen : Northern Tribes of Central Australia, 1904, pp.
455 S.

133

134 Psychology of the Religious Life

faith in the direct and magic virtue of certain ways of action
is found the world over among savage people. Nor does
one have to go to savagery for examples : greater religions
usually retain remnants of prohibitions or fears of this
earlier magic. The Atharva-Veda of the Sanskrit, for in-
stance, contains an immense collection of magic spells — to
ward off disease, to cure wounds, to give long life, to secure
affection. And the Yi King of the Chinese — the ' Book of
Changes ' — sets forth in endless explication the forms and
figures which, used in connection with certain stalks of a
plant said to be still grown on Confucius's grave, could
reveal to the enquirer luck good or bad. The older Arabs
had a custom, prohibited by Mohammed, of making a hole
in the rear of the house, in order to enter through this upon
the return from Mecca, for they believed that, upon this
occasion, to enter one's house by the door was unlucky.1
And — recalling the feeling amongst us regarding Friday or
thirteen — the Li K\ says that external undertakings should
be commenced on odd days, internal on the even.2 In the
Zend-Avesta, as in savage thought, the parings of nails, the
combings of the hair, must be buried with " fiend-smiting '
words ; carelessness in this regard is a " most deadly deed
whereby a man increases most the baleful strength of the
Daevas, as he would do by offering them a sacrifice."3
And again, it is said that by rubbing with the feather of
the raven, Varewgana, one may curse his enemies, and
none can smite him or turn him to flight. " The feather
of that bird of birds brings him help ; it brings unto him
the homage of men, it maintains in him his glory."4 Or
the utterance of certain words may have a direct and magic
influence ; they become " fiend-smiting and most healing."5
The sacred hymn may thus be efficacious of itself, or the

1 See Koran, II (VI, 27, w. Palmer's note).

2 LI Kl, I, I, 5, 6 (XXVII, 94).

3 Vendidad, XVII, 6 (IV, 186 ff.).

4 Bahrain Yast, XIV, 35 (XXIII, 241), and cf. XVI, 44 (XXIII
243) for the spell of four feathers.

6 Vendidad, X, passim.

Ceremonial and its Inner Supports 135

action of the god may be regarded as a piece of magic.
Agni supports the sky by his " efficacious spells."1

The words themselves may gain efficacy through certain
sacred associations, as when magic and religion are mingled,
in charms like the following for stanching blood, handed
down to us by Samuel Pepys as " thought fit to keep " :

" Sanguis mane in te
Sicut Christus fuit in se
Sanguis mane in tua vena
Sicut Christus in sua poena ;
Sanguis mane fixus,
Sicut Christus quando fuit crucifixus." 2

There are many more such charms recorded in a strange
collection called " The Long-Hidden Friend," used among
the Pennsylvania Germans.3 Negro simplicity and peri-
wigged shrewdness of the seventeenth century show a
common blood in the following, again from Pepys, who
had been in doubt as to whether " the good plight " as to
his health was due to his hare's foot, his morning pill of
turpentine, or to his leaving off the wearing of a gown :
Jan. 2Oth, 1664-5 : " Homeward, in my way buying a
hare, and taking it home, which arose upon my discourse
to-day with Mr. Batten in Westminster Hall, who showed
me my mistake that my hare's foot hath not the joynt to
it ; and assures me he never had his cholique since he
carried it about him : and it is a strange thing how fancy
works, for I no sooner handled his foot but I become very
well, and so continue."4 The belief in the healing or pro-
tecting power inhering in certain objects that have been
blessed or have been close to holy men belongs to this general
way of thinking. The sacred name, by its mere utterance
or graven look, works spells, as in the legends of King
Solomon's Seal, with its power to do all wonders, because
on it was the Name of all names.

1 Rig- Veda, I, 67 (XLVI, 61).

2 Pepys's Diary, ed. 1872, II, 197.

3 Reprinted in the Journal of American Folk-Lore, XVII, 89 ff.

4 Pepys's Diary, ed. 1872, II, 203 f.

136 Psychology of the Religious Life

Yet here magic and religion are more confused, for the
object works of itself, like a charm, but behind and around
it are the enforcement and good-will of a protecting spirit
to whom one turns. This transition stage, half sorcery,
half religion, is seen clearly in the great Finnish epic of the
Kalevala, where direct and god-like power is always looked
upon as resembling that of the magician. In the contest
between the hero Wainamoinen of Finland and the hot
braggart minstrel of Lapland, the Finnish hero sings his
opponent's trappings into reeds and stones, sings the Lap
himself deep into the quicksands and ever deeper, until the
victim's fair sister is promised as a ransom. Joyfully this
is accepted by Wainamoinen, and with another song the
prisoner is released from peril and there is restored to him
his horse, his sled, and all the fittings over which had gone
the spell.1 Again, the magic balsam distilled for nine days
to cure the wound of Wainamoinen is tested by applying it
to a torn birch, whose broken branches are at once made
whole, and all the tree becomes beautiful. And in a like
manner the splintered sandstone, the cleft granite, the
fissured mountain are healed by the virtue of the balm.
Yet it is also said — and here the thought of magic is in
part surmounted — that this balsam works by the power of
the great god Ukko.2 But even more clearly does magic
rite pass into religious ritual when Wainamoinen, wishing
to know what has become of the sun and moon that had
been stolen from the heavens, seeks the knowledge by a
prayer to Ukko the Creator, yet accompanying his prayer
by mysterious and potent acts : he first cuts three chips
from the alder, and lays them in magic order, touching and
turning them with his fingers ; and only then does he
address the supreme God, who is also called ' the great
Magician.' And although the alder is declared to be the
symbol of the Creator, yet it, too, is addressed as having a
will of its own ; if it gives a false answer Wainamoinen
threatens it with the nether fires of Manala. Then the

1 Rune III. 2 Rune IX.

Ceremonial and its Inner Supports 137

alder answers truthfully that the sun and moon are sleeping
in the copper-bearing mountain of Pohyola.1 In this way
the power behind and the power resident in the magic
object pass in and out ; somewhat as in Judaism the Ark
of the Covenant brought disease and death upon those
who violated it, but brought these by reason of God's
anger.2

But rites and objects finally become far more of religious
than of magical character. And then we are in the presence
of true ceremonial, of which examples lie on every hand.
Indeed, instances could be drawn from almost any religion,
savage or civilized, of the present or the past. " At a
stated time," we are told by Tacitus, speaking of the
Semnones, " all the tribes that have common blood assemble
by their representatives in a wood consecrated by the
auguries of the forefathers and by long-persistent dread.
And here, after publicly offering a human sacrifice, they
celebrate, in all its original and terrible form, their savage
rite. Moreover, there is special reverence paid the grove
itself. No one may enter it save in chains, as an inferior
and with acknowledgment of the power of the divinity over
him. If by chance he fall, he must not be lifted up, nor
may he raise himself ; he must roll out along the ground."3
Here, it was their belief, their nation had its origin, and
here dwelt the all-ruling God. The Persians, Herodotus
tells us, and in telling, contrasts them with the Greeks,
' build no altar, kindle no fire, when about to sacrifice.
With them there is neither libation nor flute nor garlands
nor sprinkled barley. But when one wishes to sacrifice to
a particular divinity, he encircles his head-dress usually
with myrtle, and takes his offering to some spot that is un-
defiled, and there calls upon his god. The sacrificer may
never seek blessings on himself alone, but he prays that it
may be well with all the Persians and with their king.

1 Rune XLIX (Crawford, 704 f.).

2 i Chronicles, XIII, 10 ff. ; i Samuel, V, 1-7.

3 Germania, XXXIX.

138 Psychology of the Religious Life

For with good fortune to them will come his own."1
Thel'festival of the lamps among the Egyptians,2 the
elaborate sacrifices to the gods of Heaven and Earth among
the Chinese, of human beings to Moloch and to the grisly
gods of Mexico, the solemn rites to the Vedic gods, or to
Ahura Mazda, the Mohammedan's turning in the earlier
days toward Jerusalem but later toward the sacred mosque
at Mecca, the elaborate ceremonial of the Pilgrimage of the
Muslims, need no more than to be named, especially when
examples enough must come instantly to mind to all who
are familiar with the ritual requirements of the ancient
Jews. Here are seen the details of endless ceremonial —
of meat offerings and the offerings of first fruits ; of sin-
offerings and burnt-offerings ; prescriptions regarding the
person and the garments of the priests, and the consecra-
tion of the temple helpers ; the ceremony of the silver
trumpets, of the scapegoat, of circumcision, of the Pass-
over, and much beside.

Yet in one particular, even with all its elaborateness,
ritualism never with the Jews reached quite the pitch it
attained in India where by the ceremonial the gods them-
selves are pushed quite into obscurity. Here we find them
at times forced to obedience by the rite, or depending upon
human observances for their strength.3 And the mere
utensils and materials used in service are themselves objects
of adoration — as when in the Veda the sacrificial post is
asked to bestow all manner of blessings.4 Ritual has here
grown so important that it has taken prime place. Where
the sacrifice is in this way felt to be effectual of itself and
quite apart from any favour of the gods, the essential
feature of magic has returned to crowd out the religious
element ;5 religious acts by their independent virtue have

1 Herodotus, I, 132 ; for the limits of Herodotus' s accuracy here, v.
Sayce's ed. of Herod., 1883, 79, note.

2 Herodotus, II, 62.

3 Cf. Oldenberg : Religion des Veda, 1894, 311 f. ; de la Saussaye :
Manual, Engl. tr., 1891, p. 525.

4 Vedic Hymns, III, 8 (XLVI, 252).

5 Cf. de la Saussaye : Manual, Engl. tr., 1891, pp. 74, 525.

Ceremonial and its Inner Supports 139

now become a kind of spell. Wherever in Christianity it is
felt that the saying of a certain round of prayers or the
attendance upon certain ceremonies is potent of itself, and
not as a means of communion with divinity, we have
sporadically the same temper as of the Brahmin. It is to
be regarded as a return to magic by the very extravagance
of the emphasis on externals.

Just as a peculiar manner of performance may exist
before the special meaning and intent comes in which makes
the rite religious, and may continue to exist after the spirit
has departed and left it again mere magic, so the acts and
symbols in still other ways show a strange persistence. As
the rosary may mark the devotions of the Muslim and the
Buddhist1 as well as the Christian, and the lamp be always
burning in the shrine of Minerva Polias2 as well as in a
Christian Church, or the cross may stand for the four
points of the compass and the four chief winds, as in old
Mexico,3 or for victorious suffering, as in Christendom to-
day ; so throughout religion, ceremonial acts may be per-
formed with the greatest difference of interpretation — the
same external fact serving as the garment for ideas and
feelings that wax and wane and yield to one another.
While, in some instances, the same feelings and ideas may
outlive many particular ways of their embodiment, showing
an odd kind of metempsychosis ; here, on the contrary, the
rite, the external form, is more stable than the spirit that
enters it. In this way circumcision had a far different
meaning for the later Jews from what it must have had for
the Jews of earlier days. Although the external act re-
mained practically the same as that performed by many
other peoples ; yet by the thought infused into it, the rite
became more spiritual and less gross : ' Circumcise there-
fore the foreskin of your heart and be no more stiff-necked."4

1 Palmer : Introd. to Qur'an, p. Ixviii ; de la Saussaye : Manual,
Engl. tr., 1891, pp. 609, 631.

2 Strabo, IX, i, 16.

3 Reville : Religions of Mexico and Peru, 1884, p. 38.

4 Deuteronomy, X, 16, and cf. Deut. XXX, 6, and Romans, II, 29.

140 Psychology of the Religious Life

Or the drama, which in some instances may have been, as
Frazer believes,1 a device akin to sympathetic magic, cer-
tainly does not remain this, but becomes an instrument of
vivid instruction as well as of festal celebration. The sacred
meal would further illustrate this ennoblement of rite. Often
in early society it seems to be a rude way of making some
desired spirit enter into the eater, by devouring tliat in
which the spirit dwells. But later, losing this rude char-
acter, it becomes, as with the Chinese or the Zoroastrians,
not unlike a family reunion at the table, an occasion when
gods and men express their common interest and bond.
With still others it is a symbol that man is dependent,
for all that is good and necessary, upon the bounty and
spiritual strength of God. In such a way Christianity has
adopted most freely the festivals and practices, not of the
Jew alone, but of the pagan Roman, or of the savage
Northerner. It has taken the old tokens, making them,
however, bear an altered sense and value. So the rite may
change, but it changes far more slowly than the thoughts
and feelings which are hidden in it. Observances that hark
back to sheerest savagery may still serve as the wrapping
for the highest reverence. So acted the fathers, and in the
very ancientness of the custom, man loses the small privacy
of his thought of God. Such remnants of the past are to
some a mere impediment ; to others they are no more a
check than old words are to poetic feeling.

If we were to pass from these examples, so insufficient to
indicate the infinite range of ritual, and were to attempt
more fully to understand the motives which bring and
maintain formal observance in religion, much stress would
have to be laid upon its savage origin, but not too much.
For nothing is easier than to let origins hinder as well as
help perception — as a Lincoln would be misunderstood if one
looked too exclusively at his wretched birth and childhood,
quite as truly as if one did not look at these at all.

It is clear that ritual at the start drew heavily on magic,

1 Golden Bough, 1900, III, 164 f.

Ceremonial and its Inner Supports 141

keeping the magic practice, as Wainamoinen used the
arrangement of the alder chips, but with the thought now
going in and through them to the god. The divinity at
first is to be controlled by charm or spell, rather than by
those motives of selfish or generous interest through which
men later make appeal. The rite, in such a state of mind, is
but a bit of magic pointed heavenward. But we find ritual
where no such magic element appears, and so we must look
for other sources too. And these can best be appreciated
if we bear in mind beforehand that careful ceremony is not
kept for religion only, but appears wherever an act seems
of special significance and can be so ordered as to express
and celebrate its spaciousness of meaning. The inaugura-
tion of a President, the coronation of a King, the opening
of Congress or Parliament, is universally given an outward
dignity by formal ways that in a measure are quite super-
fluous judged by their bare common usefulness. And
these most fitting of useless additions and honoured ancient
habits are seen in all other parts of life in their own degree.
The worn mould of legal pleading, the fixities of social inter-
course, the conventional forms of invitation, and of intro-
duction, and of greeting, the special and only allowable
times and costumery for this and that, are subjects of end-
less compassion from the thoughtful ; and yet all these
things live on, not because men are stupid followers of
custom, but because the customs themselves give something
that is needed.

In some instances there is even a hidden utility in the
act — as in having a fixed time or period, whatever it may
be, for ' calls ' ; as the telephone, with its perpetual intru-
sion, shows. And doubtless the law courts could hardly
serve our present needs if there were no prescription of
procedure, but men scrambled in and cried out their wrongs
as best they could. Often the utility is not so much in having
things ordered in some particular way, as in having them
ordered in any way at all. Especially when there is a strong
desire to meet the preferences and even whims of others,

142 Psychology of the Religious Life

there comes a mental rest in the knowledge that some things
at least are not left to be guessed — as when in Germany a
formal invitation may allay at once a natural doubt by
saying out clearly ' weisse Binde.' Often, too, and espe-
cially on great occasions, formality comes from the longing
for embellishment. The occasion is momentous and must
have its own light and atmosphere. At such times there
is pleasure in tossing aside mere utility and providence,
with all its air of commonplace, and, like boys again,
feeling the fresh touch of life and freedom. And this freedom
is heightened by the sense that the prescription is not of
our making nor of anyone we know, but has come down
from the unremembered past. It is rid of all that is petty,
personal, and changing ; and is distantly like the sky and
the courses of the stars.

In religious observances, whether they are or are not
technically of the ritual, there are all these motives and
much beside. If it seems unfitting that the approach to
kings should be helter-skelter, how much more the ap-
proach to one who rules the world. Here is the rarest, the
most important situation in all life, and should be so enacted
as if it were like nothing else. There is therefore a senti-
ment favouring what is apart, so that men may show, in
mere manner and form of speech, in garments and in
specially prepared surroundings, that common things are
set aside.

And yet this is not a matter of sentiment merely. The
special and uncommon setting changes the current and
character of one's ideas. An acquaintance of mine has
confessed that he can more successfully attack a purely
intellectual problem when in church ; as another tells me
his thought is freer at a concert. And all this is quite
intelligible. The very escape from besetting circumstance,
if nothing more — yet with a simplicity that soothes with-
out distraction — helps to take the fetters from the mind.
One can more readily slough off what is momentary and
prudent, and come into touch with the universal. So it seems

Ceremonial and its Inner Supports 143

reasonable to guard the associations of the church, keeping
them so that the very place is unaccustomed to what is
trivial.

There is a much larger gain if in addition to this more
general influence of externals, they give the mind thus
stimulated and set free a definite leading toward truth.
And religion at its best always attempts this. The ritual
aims not to stir the feelings in general, but to unite them
with thoughts of God. The cross borne aloft suggests the
victory that comes of divine suffering ; the elevated Host,
the source from which man is to seek his strength. The
rite does not remain on the sensuous and muscular side of
faith, but moves over toward the intellectual as well, of
which more need not now be said. And yet it does not
move entirely away from the active side even when the
worshipper seems to have little to do but to observe the
priests and acolytes — the processions, the genuflexions, the
crossings, and movements of sacred symbols. The ob-
server's own response to this, by lip and thought and
sympathy, makes him by an inner imitation an active
participant in the rite. In so far as men really enter into
the ceremony, they are themselves co-actors in the pre-
sentation of the mystery.

It would seem, therefore, unwise to look too steadfastly
in any one particular direction for the source and reason
of religious rites and ceremonies. They connect with magic,
but not with magic only ; nor do they connect exclusively
with myth. There has been an attempt to explain all the
forms of worship by supposing them copied from the prac-
tices described in stories of the gods : " There is nothing in
worship but what existed before in mythology," writes
Darmsteter.1 " What we call a practice is only an imita-
tion of gods, an o/xo/oxrt? 0e<5, as man fancies he can bring
about the things he wants by performing the acts which
are supposed to have brought about things of the same
kind when practised by the gods." But if, as seems prob-

1 Introd. to Zend-Avesta, p. Ixxxvii,

144 Psychology of the Religious Life

able, the actions of the gods are suggested by the most im-
pressive forms of human action, the details of myth then
are quite as truly an imitation of the heroic acts of men,
an oyuo/wcn? avQpunrw, and rite thus finds its pattern in
human conduct. Something of this thought is present in
the theory that makes ritual the source of myth rather than
its product. But it would seem preferable to bind myth
and ritual less closely together, for the roots of each run
far too wide for this. Myth finds its origin in broader
interests than the mere projection of religious or magic
observances. The personification of great nature-powers
and the personal conduct and adventure suggested by their
vicissitudes are one great motive — as in all those myths
which tell as an heroic story the death and revival of warmth
and vegetation. Other myths are doubtless the projection
of actual deeds of men, or are crude attempts at explaining
the origin of the whole world or of some special process or
object in it. And many other sources still remain to con-
found those who would derive all myth from some single
source, like that of religious ritual.

And ceremony in religion finds, in its turn, its origin and
strength in many ways. In some cases the rite may be an
earthly repetition of divine action recounted in a myth —
such was the Egyptians' own interpretation of that mimic
battle with which, at Papremis,1 the god re-entered his
temple ; and such was their representation at night, upon
the lake at Sais, of the suffering of that god whose name
Herodotus in reverence would not mention.2 In other cases
there is the thought of influencing in an imitative way the
course of nature — as in that feasting of the orphaned young
in ancient China in the Spring, since " drinking serves to
nourish the developing influence," while in the autumn
there was a feeding of the aged, in order " to nourish the
receding influence."3 Often ceremonial is but the per-

1 Herodotus, II, 63 f.

2 Ibid., II, 171 ; and cf. Book of the Dead, XVIII, and Budge's note,
p. 116.

3 Li Kl, IX, i, 4 (XXVII, 418).

Ceremonial and its Inner Siipports 145

sistence in religion of the ways of approach and petition of
great officials — of courtly audience, of bringing tribute by a
subject people to their liege, of appeasing by gifts and by
show of humility the anger of their lord. Such ceremonial
usages would be the easier of origin and continuance since
the earthly ruler was often regarded as divine, and so the
etiquette of court and of temple service would here be one.
And even when the office of heavenly and earthly ruler
became distinct, somewhat the same feeling would affect
those who approached either throne, and would lead to
observances that showed some general likeness. But with
all these there goes a general motive, since the worship-
pers feel the appropriateness of doing something to acknow-
ledge their relation to the gods, and of doing something that
shall express this relation's similarity to the most significant
bonds which hold among men, and yet express its unique-
ness in that it transcends all earthly ties. Ritual begins
with those acts which visibly and in actual experience pro-
duce great effects with men, but remoulds such acts to a
higher use as inducements and channels of communion
with the gods. But religion does not for ever keep its eye
on tangible benefits to be obtained ; the ritual is expressive,
and has in it no more of mere prudence and calculation
than has the gold upon a state-house dome, or the bannered
procession of a party victorious at the polls.1

The prescribed and communal way of acting must find
a further warrant, finally, in the spirit which it fosters among
those who unite in the act itself. Especially in his religion
does the plain man wish the support and sympathy of
others. It is not entirely because the end itself seems more
likely to be compassed if a great show of numbers is
made — as in war or in petition to a government — but the
end and aim itself stands out and seems of greater value
because of others' interest in it. The assembly, the focussing
of attention, the united action — these of themselves in some

£1

1 Cf. Coit : National Idealism and a State Church, 1907, ch. XI, on
' The Psychology of Ritual."

146 Psychology of the Religious Life

part accomplish the purpose of religion, one great object of
which is to satisfy that longing for a larger and more per-
fect companionship than our usual life affords. Yet mere
aggregation is not enough ; there must be something out-
ward and visible to produce and make evident a common
inner purpose, a sympathy and sense of union ; and this
in some degree is given by great observances in which many
join. Inasmuch as ceremonies unite men so, we can see a
reason for them, which may be somewhat obscured so long
as we are engrossed in trying to explain this or that par-
ticular ceremony.

But the activities of religion that minister to all these
ends are not confined to great assemblies. More personal
and familiar ceremony is also of importance. Solemn rites
— like those of baptism, of marriage, and of burial — are
part of the search for the help, protection, or blessing of the
spiritual world upon occasions momentous for the individual.
Such times are felt to be too significant to be passed lightly
by ; the entire family, the friends, the neighbours wish, or
must be induced, to enter into them. At the lowest there
is a gathering with mummery and incantation to ward off
evil ; at the highest, and even far below the highest, there
is sympathy and generous symbolism, and a confession of
how weak man is alone, and of trust in the near aid of the
all-powerful Good.

CHAPTER IX

COOLNESS TOWARD RITES

/"CEREMONIAL in due time comes to lie under some
\_s suspicion. This is because ritual is liable to abuse,
since there is a temptation, which many cannot resist,
to feel that the mere unthinking performance is enough —
a feeling which in its absurd extremity produces prayer-
wheels and prayer-flags inscribed with pious petitions ; or
gives us the story of the forester who, treed by a tiger, is
saved by Siva because quite unwittingly he had gone
through certain external acts.1 And now it becomes neces-
sary for the leaders to speak of the shortcomings of mere
ceremony, and of what is needed to make the rite effective.
The Muslim is warned that he must know what he is saying
if his prayer is to be of value ; the faithful are commanded
not to pray when drunk !2 So, too, mention is made of
' those who say with their mouths ' We believe,' but their
hearts do not believe."3 Righteousness is only of him who
in addition to the rites of Islam " fears the Merciful in
secret and brings a repentant heart."4 In India is found
the same insistence that the heart must enter into religious
acts. ' Whatever oblation is offered, whatever is given,
whatever penance is performed, and whatever is done,
without faith, that, O Son of Pntha ! is called ' Asat,'
and that is naught, both after death and here."5 " I heard
the Master say " — we find in the Chinese, with its impres-
sive temperance of statement — " I heard the Master say

1 Wilson : Religion of the Hindus, 1861-62, II, 218.

2 Koran, IV (VI, 78). * Ibid., V (VI, 103).

4 Ibid., L (IX, 244). s BhagavadgtU, XVII (VIII, 121).

147

148 Psychology of the Religious Life

that in the rites of mourning, exceeding grief with deficient
rites is better than little demonstration of grief with super-
abounding rites ; and that in those of sacrifice, exceeding
reverence with deficient rites is better than an excess of
rites with but little reverence."1 Again it is said that the
' Sons of Heaven ' secured the good government of the
kingdom by their power to enter into the meaning of the
ideas behind the ceremony.2 But more is needed than mere
understanding in an intellectual way : sincerity and true
reverence and a right heart are a necessary part of observing
the rites of religion.3 That the inner life must in some way
be in keeping with the outward form is made apparent also
in the Parsee scriptures : the divinity may be approached
with ample libations, gifts, sacrifices, and entreaty, and yet
remain unmoved, because the request is evil and comes
from one whose life is wrong. The fiendish snake and the
murderer thus, for all their outward piety and endless
offerings, cannot obtain from heaven their requests.4

But the expression of this need of sincerity and right
living, if even thoughtful ritual is to bring results, is not
confined to pictures of mere refusal of petition. The rite
itself then becomes abhorrent to the deity to whom it is
offered. " To what purpose is the multitude of your
sacrifices unto me," cries the Lord ; ' Bring no more vain
oblations ; incense is an abomination unto me. Your new
moons and your appointed feasts my soul hateth. Wash
you, make you clean ; cease to do evil ; learn to do well ;
relieve the oppressed, judge the fatherless, plead for the
widow."5

What may here perhaps be but a fierce and passing out-
burst to goad a people into a life in keeping with the mean-
ing of their ceremonial acts, and not really and for ever to

1 Li K\, II, i, 2, 27 (XXVII, 141) ; cf. Analects, III, 4 and 26 ; and

II. 7-

* Li m, IX, 3, 7 (XXVII, 439)-

3 Ibid., VIII, 2, 2, and 19 (XXVII, 404, 414).

* Ab§.n Vast, VIII, 29 ff. ; XI, 41 ff. (XXIII, 60 f., 64 £.).
b Isaiah, I, 11-17, w- omiss.

Coolness toivard Rites 1 49

neglect those acts, does with others, however, become a
permanent turning away from ritualism as an enemy of
real piety and good morals. With men of this belief there
seems to be the sharp alternative between going into sheer
formalism without moral activity or of giving up formality
once and for all. Extreme formalism brings a reaction away
from anything that suggests it dimly. And so, as reverence
advances, we find a whole class of religionists who, while
believing in outward activity, yet show a cleft into two
classes — those who incline toward ceremonial because it is
removed from common use, and those who turn from it for
this very reason and who act in a more utilitarian way —
feeding the hungry and visiting the sick. Even in our day,
one form of activity at times appears to the exclusion of the
other, when we see staunch ritualists who will rarely
do an act of common helpfulness, and again those whose
only religious utterance is in acts of good-will, and who
feel an aversion from anything that savours of religious
form. In many religious communities, however, the two
types of activity are closely joined — rites are supplemented
by practical beneficence, and good deeds by rites.

In modern Christianity are seen different leanings of this
sort. The ritual of the Roman and the Greek Church stands
in contrast with the generally less ritualistic Protestant
branch ; but again, within Protestantism itself a difference
of sympathy appears. In Germany the Lutheran Church
has its vestments, its formal chanted responses, its priestly
announcement of absolution from sin — like the Church of
England or the Episcopal Church in America. Standing in
relief against these are various groups that reduce the
fixities and forms of worship, until sometimes a religious
assembly is hardly to be distinguished from any other
meeting. Yet the main bodies almost everywhere have
favoured ceremonial, and those who protest violently against
it, whether in England or Germany, in India or Judea,
have been dissenters from the common custom.

In America, however, although the ritualists are strong

1 50 Psychology of the Religious Life

in number, yet relatively they are perhaps weaker than in
any other land. And this is due to several causes. The
colonies were peopled mainly by men who represented the
dissidence of dissent from the Established Church of Eng-
land, and thus a tradition favouring extreme plainness was
here established which is hard to change. But besides this,
the churches of America have probably been much affected
by the prevailing standards of political and social inter-
course. The absence of a court and of a powerful aristo-
cracy to be patterns of urbanity and elegance has made it
seem natural that religious intercourse, too, should be easy
and direct. But after all, some violence has evidently been
done to human nature, that will be avenged. For the love
of noble ceremony, cheated at its rightful place, appears in
the tawdry ritualism of 'fraternal' bodies, which in America
have had such unparalleled popularity. Here the staunch
republican, renouncing the bauble crown and pageantry of
kings, can again rejoice in dazzling regalia and stilted phrase.
The ceremonial side of these organizations shows an almost
pathetic attempt to appease the natural craving for action
unhindered, orderly, and gracious — a craving which in other
countries finds its satisfaction in the scenes that go with
military pomp, with royalty, and the service of great
cathedrals.

But there are religionists even in more ceremonious lands
who, while favouring action rather than passivity, yet turn
from ritual. And so the cleavage among actionists cannot
be ascribed to the local situation here or there. The wish
to serve God by deeds useful to one's fellows, rather than
by acts which are symbolic and which move more directly
from man to God is very difficult to disentangle fully, but it
can at least be partly understood. And so the attempt may
be made.

In a silent way religion is always influenced by the re-
spect which the social life wins from us. It is because men
are born for companionship that they seek and find it every-
where— not only in their fellow-men, but in spirits of trees

Coolness toward Rites 151

and wind and sun and stars, and in spirits that have no
fixed station or perceptible abode. And the circle of men
who seem markedly impressive to the individual undergoes
change from time to time. At first it is the few at
hand, the rarest specimens — chieftains, kings, heroes, demi-
gods— that seem to count for much. But there is for most
men a gradual recognition of the significance of even plain
men ; they, too, are admitted to have certain rights and
immunities ; and the gods themselves are recognized as the
protectors of the stranger, the beggar, and the defenceless
orphan. Moreover, this respect for unshowy human
beings, which religion comes to enjoin, grows so great with
some that it crowds out all the other contents of reverence,
and religion now becomes purely a service of humanity. As
ritual may crowd out the gods, so morality, adopted and
sanctioned by religion, may likewise crowd them out.1
The balance and roundness of religion is thus for ever im-
perilled by its parts. It is shrivelled on this side because
of hypertrophy on that. And that which may in extremity
be the death of morals,2 because all the interest and energy
flows Godward, suffers in its own turn when morality be-
comes so all-absorbing that God pales and disappears.
This rivalry which exists for so many, between serving God
and serving men, is probably the cause of the jealousy which
appears between ritual and moral action. And even where
morality remains religious, and religion moral, and God
and men alike are served, yet there is a growing tendency
to regard divinity as less interested in heaven's welfare
than in earth's ; less interested in having acts that please
God directly and alone, than in those that please him be-
cause they help mankind. In this way man feels it to be
God's will that less weight should be given to purely divine
rites and more to human benefaction.

Take, e.g., Confucius's attitude, as expressed in the Analects, VI, 20.
3 Cf. Gladstone to the Duchess of Sutherland : " There is one pro-
position which the experience of life burns into my soul ; it is this, that
man should beware of letting his religion spoil his morality." Morley's
Life of Gladstone, II, 185.

152 Psychology of the Religious Life

Yet there is no absolute conflict between ritual and moral
interest. For ritual in religion depends actually upon a
sense of the significance of the gods, upon a form of moral
feeling. For if one were unmoral utterly! he would be
unsocial, the gods themselves would labour in" vain to
impress him, and he would never worship. Ritual that is
not magic is a form of morality turned Godward ; and when
it seems to be jealous of earthly morals, this means a con-
flict within different parts of the larger morality, rather than
morality competing with something entirely outside it.
And indeed, reverence at its best brings its own cure for any
neglect of men which it may occasion. For high reverence
is respect for a God of definite moral character, whose
sympathy goes only to those who act honourably toward
their fellow-men. In spite of its occasional contracting
interest, religion in its total course is the great ally of
morals. \- \te\2:' fr ta'! i

But we must not lose sight of at least one other cause of
coolness toward ritual, even where men are still activists.
Often the aversion is part of that general impatience with
whatever hinders freedom. And ritual often does seriously
hinder freedom by becoming trivial and punctilious, as
with the Brahmin or the ancient Jew. Then freedom must
be sought by some great destructive effort, or by turning
to a more temperate faith. Islam, by its milder observ-
ances, brought in this way relief to the Persians from the
extravagance of the Magian ritual with its dread of polluting
the fire and the earth.1 Christianity was an immense
loosening of the ritual bonds of Judaism ; Protestantism a
relief from the exactions of the Roman Church.

And even when the rites are of no great inconvenience,
there may come to be an impatience of all that seems set
and fixed, especially in our West, where men grow ex-
travagantly fond of freedom. Hidden in everyone there
is a trace of the radical or even of the anarchist ; and if he
is not always throwing bombs at government, he more

1 Darmesteter : Introd. to Zend-Avesta, pp. liv f.

Coolness toward Rites 153

mildly shatters some small convention for freedom's sake.
In its own way, ceremonial is a fixed and fettering thing ;
and by revolt against it in favour of human charity, in-
dividualism is in some measure reasserted. For in charities
the will is expressed with less apparent convention and
more isolatedly ; each may choose the object of his kind-
ness and perform his act when and in what manner he
elects. And faith thereby may seem to have found a more
sincere, because more private and personal, utterance. One
may in this see that several causes contribute to make men
cold if not hostile toward ceremonial action — causes to which
still others will be added when later we come to examine
the motives toward passivity.

CHAPTER X

SOME RIVAL INFLUENCES UPON ACTION

WE must now pass from the question why some choose
action that is practical and humanly useful, rather
than ritual action which so often, like laughter, seems to
die in the mere expression, leaving nothing behind ; and
instead some opposing forces should be noticed that give
action now one form and now another.

It would seem almost futile to delay and ask why men
act at all in religion — as idle as to ask why men act in com-
mon social life. Men are endowed with reflexes and in-
stincts, and act from these and from impulse, as well as
from deliberate intent and will. And just as human situa-
tions stir and stimulate us to performance, so the situations
that go beyond visible companionship call forth response.
Let action then, to avoid too wide a sweep, be taken as
though it were self-intelligible (though, of course, it is not) ;
and our only interest for the time shall be in trying to see
a little farther into its diversities and into some strains of
character that affect it.

The contrast so well known between activity that comes
of habit or routine, and activity that is fresh, reforming or
creative is weighty also for religion. To some extent both
kinds are part of life, and appear in every living being. Each
must be both stationary and moving. Each must show
both submission and initiative — in body, in mind, both in
human and in divine relations. But action itself seems often
to be without the element of originality, or else to be ex-

Some Rival Influences upon Action 155

clusively original. The agent insists upon his own pur-
pose making others contribute to it ; or else he takes his
purpose entirely from them, and has none of his own to set
in opposition. The difference between the masculine and
feminine type is in part found here — women being more
resonant, more subject to induction from the social current,
while men are better insulated, are more self-reliant, readier
to believe in their own perceptions and to act upon them.
In this way — not so much because of some special endow-
ment lying only in thought or will, but rather because of
the general form of character as a whole — men show forth
a marvellous richness or vacuity. The great criminals, the
great geniuses are men ; and the two classes are similar at
least in this, that they are defiant of custom and convention.
Originality and freedom of activity are deeply affected by
the strength or weakness of the social bond, in which men
differ markedly.

Now in religion there is a like difference in the character
of action — action that is more conservative, more feminine ;
and action of the radical, the masculine type. And in general
it seems probable that the founders of religion belong for
the most part to the radical, the masculine type. Like those
of politics and science and art, the great leaders of religion
have had reformation in their blood, and while appreciative
of the good that has gone before, they have been nobly
defiant of much in custom and tradition. We must not
be deceived by the claim, so often sincerely made by re-
formers, that they are merely returning to the older ways —
as when Mohammed asserts that he is not an innovator, but
is merely preaching the faith of Abraham.1 Even with such
statements, and when, moreover, old customs are carried
over from the former faith,2 there is real innovation under
the guidance of a fresh ideal that merely seems to have
had reality in the past. And this reforming spirit which
is so prominent at the birth of great religions, reappears in

1 Koran, XLVI (IX, 225) ; VI (VI, 137).

2 Cf. Koran, II (VI, 22).

156 Psychology of the Religious Life

varying degrees at later times. The attempts to return
to the practices of the Master have in them usually much
that is a free departure, for good or ill, from the older
ways. In so far as religionists are votaries of the Ideal,
they are by that fact turned against the present order, and
are not pure conservatives.

And yet the conservative strain here is strong. The mass
of the communicants in any religion show the appreciative
rather than the creative spirit, and fail to distinguish the
broad principles of the ideal, and the particular mode in
which at some given time these find application. And thus
so many things that should be mere means and steps are
taken as finalities. Partly in this way we may account for
that clinging to the established, especially in regard to the
formal thought and practices of religion. The very wording
of holy utterance becomes almost sacrosanct. The sacred
song of the Winnebagoes is in words that no one now uses
or can understand.1 The Song of the Arval Brothers was
still used in ancient Roman worship after its archaic language
was no longer clear ; just as Latin is used in the Church of
Rome all these centuries since its death as common speech,
or the forms of expression of older English versions of the
Bible are still observed in the church, even though they
are misleading or unintelligible. This fixed determination
to maintain and love the language of the canon has an
interesting effect upon idiom and upon the people's taste.
Thus the style and language of the Koran is said to have
been, at its time, rugged and even colloquial in some re-
spects ; yet upon becoming canonical it finally so moulds
taste that it seems the very ideal of Arabic style, and such
that no subsequent writer can quite attain Mohammed's
excellence.2 Something of the kind has doubtless con-
tributed to make our King James version seem such per-
fection of English style. To the contemporary John
Selden3 it seemed a mass of Hebraisms — English words but

1 Indians' Book, ed. Curtis, 1907, p. 225.

2 Palmer : Introd. to Qur'an, pp. Iv, Ixxvi ff.

3 Selden : Table Talk, V, 3.

Some Rival Influences upon Action 157

not English phrases, he said. But many of these have
since then, by the very authority of the Scripture, forced
themselves upon the language and now govern our taste
and usage.1

This sanction given to unessentials is thus an almost
universal effect of reverence. It may have its different
degrees, as when the Chinese canon, though referring here
and there to innovations that seem to have become estab-
lished, yet pronounces death, without so much as listening
to defence, on those who introduce " strange garments, won-
derful contrivances, and extraordinary implements," which
tend to raise doubts among the multitude.2 Something of
this spirit is in the Russian Doukhobors with their effort
to live in primitive and holy ways, without contact or inter-
course with ' Caesar ' and his minions, without clothing or
modern labour and machinery.3 Here primitivism which
in other religions may be a mere matter of proper vestments,
positions, sprinkling or immersion or some trick of language,
has grown until the chief and only thing in the service of
God appears to be the following of ancient prescription to
the letter.

But such ways may in a measure be excused if we bear
in mind that conservatism is not peculiar to religion ; but
is an essential part, apt to break out into dogged immobility,
in almost any effort. Not only is it always before us in art
and politics, but it is strong in the life of savages and chil-
dren. There is a popular error that fogyism is peculiar to
the old. The readiness of children to adopt new ways is
less natural and instinctive than we suppose, having often
in it a suggestion of duress and the right of might. I dis-
tinctly recall the evident pain and black rebellion with which
a little boy saw for the first time his older sister deliberately
put a chair down upon its back, instead of on its legs, as
earth and sky intended ; or again, beheld a doll's hat placed

1 See the series of nine articles on " The Latest Translation of the
Bible," by Henry M. Whitney, in Bibliotheca Sacra, 1902-7.
5 Li A'l, III, 4, 16 (XXVII, 237).
3 Maude : A Peculiar People ; the Doukhobdrs, 1905.

158 Psychology of the Religious Life

upon an elder's head. These things clearly seemed to him
subversive of all history and social order. And similar
ways of regarding things have been noted by observers of
savage life.1 It may make some of us more patient of
Toryism generally to think of it as having, even in its
extreme conservatism, some touch of childhood ; there is
perhaps a slight advantage in standing for what is in part
infantile, immature, rather than for what is wholly fossil-
ized ; it seems a shade less hopeless.

And further, there is some appropriateness in preserving
the old in religious custom, unless at too great inner cost,
just because it helps the mind away from the momentary
and commonplace and private. All innovations suffer from
extraneous things ; regardless of the merits of his plan, the
proposer himself has this or that defect ; and this colours
the appearance of all he offers. With ancient things all
such trifles have vanished, and the tradition, for those who
are not bookish, seems to come from time and the spirit of
the world. And to understand fully the attachment to
religious wrappings, we must remember that human nature
always spreads its affections beyond their reasonable seat.
The liking for the child spreads over his toys and play-
mates and all who have his look, especially if he is no more
here ; his room must be kept, and all within it, as he used
them. To the Greek, this is foolishness ; but it is human,
nevertheless ; and religion, including, as it does, all things
of our nature, suffers or is enriched from this same source.
The place of God and all that has been accustomed to him
— the rites, the old familiar ways of expressing confidence
and loyalty, the old symbols — always show the after-light
of his glory ; and so it requires some urgency before reverent
men are willing to hack and cobble these things. " After
all," they feel, " what if there are better words and better
actions than these so familiar ? they are not better for
us ; we shall lose by them more than we gain." But if the

1 Boas : " Some Traits of Primitive Culture," Journal of American
Folk-Love, XVII, 243 ff.

Some Rival Influences upon Action 159

present task were not merely to describe and explain, but
were to criticize and offer direction, it might be well to add
that each generation must, even in its sense of reverence, be
willing to sacrifice something for those who are to come.
For if readjustments are not made at small incon-
venience, they will be made at great and by agony of
revolution.

More of the spring and government of action will be
apparent when, later, we consider those forms of belief that
turn from acts as altogether worthless. But here it would
be well to see even dimly the way in which deeds are con-
nected with the feeling for the world and self and one's
fellow-men. We must have some sense of the worth of these
if we are to act. If all things of this world are worthless,
then, of course, no act of ours can be of much importance ;
for we can act primarily only upon what is here ; and, after
all is done, it remains essentially what it was before — par-
ticular, material, connected with sense and body. There
may be paralysis, however, not alone from a sense of
such necessary limitation, but even in having too wide a
view, when in the width there is no point of supreme dis-
tinctness, no mental fovea. The Eastern mind often suffers,
it would seem, from this lack of point. The whole universe
lies so endlessly before it, world upon world, life stretching
limitless forward and back, birth on birth through ages
past and future, that there seems no place to fix interest
and intent, and to feel that here is something standing out
and worthy of attack and change. The ages seem all of
equal clearness with the present ; in immeasured space
there are before the mind numberless systems of worlds
each with its earth, its sun and moon, its dwelling of the
gods, its Brahma, its heaven and hell. It is cosmology of
the unfixed gaze. And even with regard to personal life,
there is a kind of infatuation in mere expanse. ' When
the Great King of Glory had died " the Blessed One says
to his faithful follower Ananda — when the Great King of
Glory died, " he came to life again in the happy world of

160 Psychology of the Religious Life

Brahma. For eight and forty thousand years, Ananda, the
Great King of Glory lived the happy life of a prince ; for
eight and forty thousand years he was viceroy and heir-
apparent ; for eight and forty thousand years he ruled the
kingdom ; for eight and forty thousand years he lived, as a
layman, the noble life in the Palace of Righteousness. And
then, when, full of noble thoughts, he died, he entered, after
the dissolution of the body, the noble world of Brahma.
Now it may be, Ananda, that you may think, ' The Great
King of Glory of that time was another person.' But,
Ananda, you shoul'd not view the matter thus. I at that
time was the Great King of Glory."1 And again, there is
reference to the one birth, the two births, the three, four,
five, ten, twenty, thirty, forty, fifty, one hundred, one
thousand, one hundred thousand births which the same
person must endure and may remember !2 Here, too, we
see the universe itself going through alternate aeons of
destruction and renewal. No one can work when such
thoughts actually lie deep in the mind. Your Occidental
may somewhere in his science have a glimmer resembling
ideas like this ; but in no such world does he live. He
narrows things down until they become manageable and
are subject to onset and personal absorption.

Action, therefore, is influenced by the view of the world
and of its relation to God — whether he and all about leave
opportunity and incentive for human effort. And the high
value which activity possesses in man's eyes is shown by
the fact that supreme activity often is attributed to the
divinity. In this feeling Christian and Muslim are at one.
" He is God, the one, the victorious. He created the
heavens and the earth in truth ! It is He who clothes the
day with night ; and clothes the night with day ; and
subjects the sun and the moon, each one runs on to an
appointed time ; a}^e ! He is mighty, the forgiving ! "3
Indeed, action is often felt to be so much an attribute of

1 Maha-Sudassana Sutta, II, 35-37 (XI, 285).

8 Akankheyya Sutta, 17 (XI, 215 f.). 3 Koran, XXXIX (IX, 182).

Some Rival Influences upon Action 161

divinity that none may share it with him. He it is who
does all that is done, and man's actions are mere seeming.
To many there appears to be no higher title nor one more
significant and descriptive of God than to call him ' the
Creator.' It comes of the importance which action, es-
pecially productive action, has for most men, so that
naturally what seems so great in human eyes must in
greatest measure be ascribed to God. Yet this ascription
of activity to God is by no means universal. ' The Lord is
not the cause of actions, or the capacity of performing
actions amongst men, or of the connection of action and
fruit. But nature only works."1 When action is regarded
as a lowly thing, a mark of finitude, God is set free from
action, he is not the Creator. The production of the world,
then, is a secondary function, delegated to some Demiurge
or other finite spirit. In such thoughts and pictures men
make clear the value they place on deeds, and on ex-
ternals.

And in one other way, at least, the value of action ap-
pears— in the importance attached in religion to freedom
of the will, in regard to which there often seems a sad
dilemma. If the power to do be really a mark of worth
and nobleness, then the very honour of divinity appears to
require that every act should flow from Heaven, and all
that man seems to do should really be done of God. Then
comes a conflict ; for while action of itself has dignity, yet
the character and substance of the act, especially the human
act, may be so unworthy, so evil, that it seems best that
God forego the dubious honour. Yet some who feel that
to be the fount of all achievement is of itself so great a
dignity, recklessly make God the author of all acts, both
good and ill. This desire even awkwardly to honour God is
often checked, however, not only by the fact that actions
may be evil, but also by the unconquerable sense that
men as well as gods have worth. It is part of that con-
scious value of even a finite self and of human comrades,

1 Bhagavadgita, V (VIII, 65).
M

1 62 Psychology of the Religious Life

which makes many feel that man is himself a limited
creator, either in his own right or by divine favour. While
logic does not always rule these ways of thought, yet it
comes in to strengthen ; for unless man can really act and
is not a puppet, there seems no moral propriety, though
there may be a deterrent example, in punishing men for
what they did not do. Evil undeserved and yet heaven-sent
seems almost an impossibility ; the mind is far less stag-
gered by goods unearned. They come so abundant from
nature and from human intercourse, which luckily, even at
low ebb, retains much of generosity, that there soon ceases
to be a mystery in undeserved rewards. So that man is
less captious regarding them, even when he thinks the will
and effort are not really his.

Action itself on man's part, as well as the conviction that
the act is really his, would thus seem to be the natural
accompaniment of self-possession and a sense of personal
worth. Those act who are not utterly overpowered by what
is beyond them, nor yet indifferent to it. Action is thus a
virtue of the mean. Religious energy, whether it be of
ritual or of morals, whether it be of self-culture or of im-
pressing its faith on others, is possible only when men feel
the bond between the human and the divine — feel it, but
not overwhelmingly. They must retain, in all the stir,
enough of self-control to see and do. Power and eagerness
to act, however, do not seem gravely affected by a denial
of free will. Religions which affirm most stoutly that
necessity is over all except the Divine Being are often
accepted by the incurably active. Calvinism is not in
practice anything inert. And Islam, which declares that
there is a book for each, wherein from the beginning all his
acts are written down and his final fate, is marked by
fanatic zeal. Indeed, the confidence in a power which
moves us all — such is the curious grain and weave of
character — seems often the best device for removing the
let and hindrance of scruple and responsibility. The whole
human race is in some degree a good servant but a poor

Some Rival Influences upon Action 163

master. It needs to feel the presence of a strong hand and
will ; then its timidity and indecision vanish, and it can
up and act, even of itself, as the learner often goes without
the hand behind him so long as he feels that the hand is
there.

CHAPTER XI

ACTIVITY AND REVERENT INACTION

IN contrast to that part of religion which presses on to
action, there stands the restraining side. The divine
relation now no longer incites to deeds, whether of impulse or
of ceremony, but to a reverent passiveness. All things exter-
nal, among which lies at least the outer end of voluntary
action, are felt as unessential to devotion, and quiet and
receptivity are sought instead. The ways between man
and the spiritual world are felt to be unseen ; and while
this inner communion may lead to occasional acts, yet com-
pared with ceremony and all outward warfare of the faith,
they seem a perfect rest. This approach to God by inward
ways, however, is not always the same ; sometimes it is a
communion into which there goes more of quiet feeling,
more of sympathy ; and again, it is rather of intelligence :
the distance between man and God is annulled by under-
standing, by knowledge. The first of these ways, less in-
tellectual, will be before us for the present.

The tracing of this more passive mode of intercourse with
divinity leads at first among outward things. For at first
the aim, both in magic and in religion, is mainly the attain-
ment of external goods ; and these external goods are
sought very largely by external means. For the magician,
the words he utters, the mystic characters, the arrangement
of lines or sticks or stones — these are potent in themselves.
The inner state of the magician is of relatively little im-
portance ; he must have some knowledge, it is true, but
this is merely that he may properly carry out the form or

164

Activity and Reverent Inaction 165

incantation needed to gain the end. At its small beginnings
here, the inner state has no value except as an antecedent
and preliminary ; if the act could be performed without
consciousness, its magic power would be no less.

There is, moreover, the belief that the thought or pur-
pose of the supernatural power is revealed in outward signs.
The conviction that Heaven reveals its will to men by some
visible event exists among most peoples. The Jews of
Jesus' time were constantly asking for a sign of the truth
of his teaching. The Arabs of Mohammed's day taunted
the prophet because no portents confirmed his message.
If he really was a prophet, why did he not produce out-
right a river of water or a garden of fruits ? Why did not
the heavens fall upon the unbelievers if what they rejected
was of God ? x But some outward indication is looked to,
not alone in cases of apostleship, but even in more secular
issues. The intent of Heaven is revealed regarding the
common affairs of private or public fortune by the stars, the
planets, comets, and eclipses, thunder, the flight of birds,
or of arrows, the behaviour of sacred fowl, the appearance
of the entrails in sacrifice, by the use of the tortoise-shell,
by the chance phrase which catches the eye upon opening
the Bible or some other book, like Virgil — by these and a
thousand things beside. The ancient Germans were diligent
in the practice of divination. A branch lopped from a fruit
tree was cut into small pieces, marked and carelessly thrown
down. The priest or father of the family invoked the gods,
and with eyes toward heaven took up each piece three
times and found a meaning. Not only the flight, but the
notes of birds were of augury, as well as the neighing and
snorting of white horses, " undefiled by earthly labour,"
and kept at the public expense. No species of augury, says
Tacitus, is more unquestioningly accepted by the people,
by the chiefs, and even the priests ; the priests regard
themselves as merely servants of the gods, while the horses
(they believe) are actually acquainted with the divine mind. 2
1 Koran, XVII (IX, n). 2 Germania. Ill and X.

1 66 Psychology of the Religious Life

>The ordeal likewise is a means of learning the attitude of
gods. In South Guinea witches are detected by dosing
the suspected person with an intoxicating drink ; if it pro-
duces vertigo, so that he cannot walk through a compli-
cated arrangement of small sticks, he is proved a witch.1
' If a man has accused another of laying a kispu (spell)
upon him, but has not proved it," says the code of Ham-
murabi, " the accused shall go to the sacred river, he shall
plunge into the sacred river, and if the sacred river shall
conquer him, he that accused him shall take possession of
his house. If the sacred river shall show his innocence and
he is saved, his accuser shall be put to death. He that
plunged into the sacred river shall appropriate the house
of him that accused him."2

But revelations come also through human channels — it
may be by the external action or success of some man. The
future was foretold, among the Germans, by a combat of
one of their own tribe with a captive. Or again, it was by
the character of the cry of their own people, when before
the battle they raised shield to mouth and sent forth a roar
of valour.3 This, which distantly reminds one of the saying,
vox populi vox Dei, had its analogue in China, where the
feeling and voice of the people has been taken as a sign
of Heaven's attitude toward some impending act.4

Yet it is by the human mind and intelligible word that
the clearest revelations come. Often the divinity has some
special place where his will is expressed ; as in the oracle
of Ammon in Libya, or of Istar at Arbela, or in those many
Greek oracles — at Delphi, Abse, Dodona, Branchidae ; and of
Amphiaraiis and Trophonius — which Croesus is said to have
consulted and found by canny test to be, for the most part,
not entirely trustworthy.5 At such oracles the divinity often
used the priest or priestess as a mere mouthpiece, giving

1 Wilson : Western Africa, 1856, p. 398.

2 Johns : Babylonian and Assyrian Laws, Contracts, and Letters, 1904,
p. 44. 3 Germania, III and X.

4 See de la Saussaye : Manual, Engl. tr., 1891, p. 347.

5 Herodotus, I, 46-48.

Activity and Reverent Inaction 167

verbal inspiration — an occurrence doubtless connected with
automatic speaking, so well known at the present day. Such
direct verbal utterance from Heaven was not, however, con-
fined to oracles. In the Koran the Lord, through Gabriel, is
supposed to dictate the sacred text, though with here and
there an error which the prophet must subsequently cor-
rect. And the doctrine of verbal inspiration of scripture,
wherever found, rests upon a like belief.

But apart from such inner revelations through specially
chosen men and at chosen places, there is all the while a
growing belief in some less official and public illumination,
an inner light that comes privately and directly to the
person concerned. At first the influx of the divine may be
sought, as we have already seen, by fasting and loneliness,
by scourging and leaping, by drinks and fumes ;x in these
crude ways insight is to be attained, or the desired spirit
is to be brought near, until it ' possesses ' the devotee. And
especially in visions and dreams the world of spirits may be
open to men. The Gates of Dreams — the gate of horn and
the gate of ivory — in Homer,2 through which there comes
to the inner eye of the sleeper a reality empowered to
speak and act like some particular man ; the visions of
Jacob and of Joseph ; the dream which before the birth of
Cyrus portends his wide sway3 — these illustrate the belief
in dreams as messages from Heaven. But in sleep the
person has laid aside all effort and will ; the ways to the
supernatural have now been opened while he was purely
passive ; no ritual acts were being performed, no priest was
mediating between the god and the one to whom the message
came. In this way receptivity comes to be an important
part even of early religion, along with action ; and out of this
receptive side the extreme of passive reverence seems to
grow, just as the punctilious observances of extreme
ritualism grow out of the active side.

Yet even here such revelations are occasional, at least
for most men, and seem to be a privilege of the few. It is

1 See pp. 109 ff. 2 Odyssey, XIX, 562 ff. 3 Herodotus, I, 108.

1 68 Psychology of the Religioiis Life

the office of the mystics and of all who believe in the prime
or sole importance of the inward light to make this direct
communion between the individual and the Divine a more
normal and persistent fact, to be sought by all as the one
essential of religion. God comes to each heart and reveals
himself there, rather than through outward occurrences or
portents, or the words of other men, or even the sacra-
ments of the church. He comes only in quietness, in still-
ness, and not in busy seeking.

And so, in religion that has far advanced, we find large
groups of men who think lightly of all outer acts. By their
belief that religion is entirely an inward thing, they stand
opposed to those who lay stress upon some form of conduct.
The classic dispute in the early days of the Church as to
the relative value of faith and works is too familiar to need
more than mention. At the one extreme were those who
believed that the followers of Jesus must continue to ob-
serve all the externals of the Jewish Law ; while among
those opposed to them were some who felt that the liberty
of the Gospel brought relief from all external requirements
whatever, not alone of ceremonial but even of common
morals. Thus Paul had difficulty both with Judaizing
disciples and with those whose faith became so negligent
of acts that their conduct soon became a public scandal.

Judaism and Christianity are sometimes set in opposi-
tion, the one as a religion of external observances, the other
as of the spirit and the heart. Doubtless it is true that
the centre of interest is not the same in these religions, but
it is no less true that the contrast between outer and inner
exists in later Judaism as it does in all advanced religion.
Over against the external requirements of such books as
Leviticus and Deuteronomy is the spiritual communion of
the Psalms, and the call of the Prophets to repentance and
humility. The Jews have had their quietists and mystics as
truly as have Christians, Brahmans, and Buddhists.

But the name of 'Quietist' comes to us more directly from
a small group of Christians of Germany, led by Spener,

Activity and Reverent Inaction 169

but drawing help from the Spaniard Molinos of the seven-
teenth century, whose book, The Spiritual Guide, has been
of great importance to the Society of Friends. The Quietists
showed their attachment to the inner means of grace by
neglecting the outer. They were careless of the Mass and
the Confessional, and of all external rites and customs,1
just as the Shakers, or ' Shaking Quakers,' repudiated the
sacraments, professing to be influenced by no creed or
custom among other Christians, but to be led by direct
dictation of the Spirit of God. And in Canada, but a few
years ago there appeared a strange company of Russian
enthusiasts — the ' Doukhobors ' already mentioned — many
of whom showed the strangest aversion to secular govern-
ment, and to labour, and were ready to enter towns " in
the manner of Adam and Eve." Such conduct drew wide
attention to these fantastic religionists both in the New
World and in their native land. " ' Take up thy cross and
follow me,' and to follow Christ," writes their leader Verigin,
" we must live as he lived, and we see that Christ did no
physical work, nor did the apostles." And before this, when
insisting that man's true existence is not physical but is
spiritual, he says, ' And therefore, in my opinion, man
need not act, but need only observe and admire what
exists."2 Far earlier than all these, and with a different
tinge, were the ' Hesychasts,' Greek Quietists, among the
monks of Mount Athos in the fourteenth century.3

The contrast of devout action and devout passivity is
also well seen in the still farther Orient. The Vedas show
a sense of the importance of ceremony ; the gods are to be
approached with physical offerings and formal prayer. In the
Upanishads there appears a profound indifference to all kinds
of action, or even a condemnation of acts. Knowledge and
withdrawal are praised, but those who perform acts either
of ceremony or of public usefulness or charity pass into

1 See, e.g., Golden Thoughts from ' The Spiritual Guide' of Molinos, 1883,
pp. 86, 112 ; Bigelow : Molinos the Quietist, 1882, pp. 17 f.

2 Quoted by Maude, in A Peculiar People, 1905, p. 225 f.

3 Shaff-Herzog : Encycl., II, 984.

170 Psychology of the Religious Life

smoke and from smoke into night ; and, after the gods
have purged them of their ' works,' they must finally begin
again the weary round of life.1 And evil acts do no harm.
The world of the man who truly knows Indra cannot be
affected by any kind of works of his own, however sinful —
thieving, or murder even of his father or mother !2 And
likewise in the Bhagavadgita contempt is at times poured
on the litany and ceremony of the Vedas. Neither the
chanted hymns nor penances nor gifts nor sacrifice, it is
revealed, can bring one to the truth. Access to the divine
comes rather by detachment, by devotion, by meditation
on the indescribable.3 And yet all action is not condemned
without abatement. For because absolute passivity seems
impossible, and often is of doubtful good, the doctrine takes
this devious course : it is best at times to act, especially for
purposes of sacrifice, to avoid offence to the ignorant and
those who would misunderstand. Here action is better
than inactivity.4 Yet the act, too, should be performed
entirely without attachment : the disciple is commanded
to feel that he is not the real doer of his actions, but that
these are ah1 done by ' the qualities of nature.' " Forsaking
all attachment to the fruit of action, always contented,
dependent on none, he does nothing at all, though he
engages in action." The acts are done " merely for the
sake of the body," as a concession, and with an eye beyond
the acts ; the acts of one who performs them in this spirit
are " all destroyed."5 Thus even pious action, like some
outer evil, may do no harm if the heart is right. And, indeed,
in the end the whole question is declared to be of small
moment ; pursuit of action and renunciation of action lead
to like results, though pursuit is the better of the two. He
who performs either well, obtains the fruit of both. The
seat which the Sankhyas obtain by their devoted knowledge

1 A'Mndogya-Upanishad, V, 10, 3 ff. (I, 80 f.).

2 Kaushitaki-Upanishad, 3, i (Deussen : Sechsig Upan., p. 44) ; cf.
Miiller's tr., I, 292.

3 Bhagavadgita, XI, XII (VIII, 99 f.).

4 Ibid., Ill (VIII, 52 ff.). 6 Ibid., Ill, IV (VIII, 53 ff.).

Activity and Reverent Inaction 171

is reached by the Yogins also by their devoted action, since
renunciation and observances have a like issue. Indeed,
renunciation is difficult except by devoted observance ;
and when one is devoted, pious acts bring to him no
taint.1

But even among those who still retained their reverence
for the older Scriptures, there were opposing sects ; there
were those who felt that the study of the Vedas was good
because it led to dutiful action ; while opposed to them
were those who commended Vedic study as leading to the
knowledge of the highest Being. A similar contrast appears
among the Buddhists, in the great schism of the Hinayanists
— those of the ' Small Vehicle,' and the Mahay anists — those
of the ' Great Vehicle.' The monastic life with its relative
seclusion and passivity was the ideal of the one sect, while
for the other it seemed best to lead a life of action in touch
with one's fellow-men.2 The controversy, so familiar to us
of the West, as to whether man is capable of contributing in
any active way to his own salvation, has run its vigorous
course also with people of the East. The greater number
of the South Indian Vaishnavas, we are told, have split into
two great opposing parties — the one maintaining that men
must have absolute faith in Vishnu, which they illustrate
by the kitten's passive dependence on the hold of the
mother-cat ; while their antagonists maintain that man
must co-operate with Vishnu — as the young monkey must
hold on to the mother-monkey when she leaps from branch
to branch.3 The sense of the futility of human action — and
a resultant passiveness — is, in a measure, but the reverse
side of the belief in the sole-agency of God.

In some ways the division seems even sharper as we pass
to the religion of China. The classic books of Confucianism
are almost unexampled in their minute prescriptions
regarding conduct of every kind. Magic practices are given,

1 Ibid., V (VIII, 63 S.) ; cf. ch. Ill (VIII, 52 f.).

" de la Saussaye : Manual, Engl. tr.( 1891, pp. 522 f., 618 f.

3 Monier-Williams : Modern India and the Indians, 1887, p. 192.

172 Psychology of the Religious Life

as well as those that are religious ; and religious rites mingle
with what we should regard as moral action ; until we find
ourselves amid things that for us would be mere social
etiquette or household prudence — the spirit of the sage and
prophet descends to the level of Lord Chesterfield, and,
finally, to that of a writer of a cookery book. How to
flavour soup or to eat it ungulpingly ; when properly to
disparage to a guest one's own dinner,1 or which hand to use
in presenting to another a horse, and which hand a dog ;2
and whether the husband of a maternal cousin should
wear mourning for the wife of a maternal uncle 3 — the
proprieties here are set forth with the same gravity as are
the rites for the worship of ancestors and of the spirits of
Earth and Sky. The interest and scruple of conduct has
become almost a mental disease. Just the contrary spirit is
in that Chinese sect of Buddhists who on account of their
renunciation and passivity have been called the Do-Nothing
sect (Wu-wei).4 And this spirit runs through the chief
canonical book of the religion, known as Tao-ism. Lao-tze,
the great Leader, declares that he lacks all the activities of
other men ; he seems to be merely drifting.5 " The kingdom
is a spirit-like thing," he tells us, " and cannot be got by
active doing. He who would so win it destroys it ; he who
would hold it in his grasp loses it." 6 The positive and active
virtues are of no avail and had better be renounced.7 They
begin to appear as men decline spiritually, as they begin to
lose the true Way ; then come the ' proprieties ' of which
Confucius thinks so much, and with them enter grave
disorders.8 Those who follow the true Way — Tao — are, like
the Quakers, opposed to bearing arms9 — the hard is to be
broken by the soft, the best action is inaction.10 Not by

1 Li AX I, i, 3, 5 (XXVII, 81).

2 Ibid., i, 4, 17 f. (XXVII, 85).

3 Ibid., II, i, 3, 40 (XXVII, 146).

4 de la Saussaye : Manual, Engl. tr., 1891, p. 630.
6 Tao Teh King, I, 20 (XXXIX, 63).

6 Ibid., 29 (XXXIX, 72), Legge's tr.

7 Ibid., 19 (XXXIX, 62). 8 Ibid.. II, 38 (XXXIX, 80).
* Ibid., I, 31 (XXXIX, 73). 10 Ibid., II, 43 (XXXIX, 87).

Activity and Reverent Inaction 173

outward things nor by outward actions is the Way to be
followed : the true view is to be had without leaving your
door, all things can be seen without so much as looking
out of one's window. The farther anyone goes from him-
self the less he knows.1

1 Tao Teh King, 47 (XXXIX, 89).

CHAPTER XII

THE INNER SOURCES OF PASSIVITY

WITH the character of reverent inaction made some-
what definite by what has gone before, its ground
and motive should be examined.

Passivity is often but a farther following of that way
which is already familiar as Renunciation. For religious
avoidance need not be merely of external goods. Having
turned from all things outward, the withdrawal may then
pass inward, and direct its forbidding look toward the com-
mon activities of the mind. Not simply must desire and
passion then be checked, but the condemnation may fall
on all forms of mental action. Doubtless there is at first
the intention to check and annul merely those activities
that seem less devout — futilities of recollection and of hope,
day-dreaming that distracts from the interests of the spirit,
the planning of merely worldly success and honour. The
self must be freed from these, to contemplate unhindered
the eternal world. But once this process of rooting out the
needless is begun, it often loses sight of all niceties of differ-
ence. Especially when all natural and human matters are
regarded as evil, or at least worthless, and the spiritual is
thought of as different in kind from the natural life, and as
lying utterly distinct and apart from this world, then piety,
which would turn its back on all that is not eternal, has
no proper action of its own remaining except, perhaps, this
turning. Life then becomes a study of destruction, not of
the body alone, nor of the desire to gratify the sensual
nature, but of all desire and effort and interest whatsoever,

174

The Inner Sources of Passivity 175

save the one interest in a spiritual state all indistinct and
motionless. Quietude, especially in the Orient, rests on
the contempt for all that is finite and particular. But since
finitude and particularity are not found in outer things alone,
but also in our acts whether outer or inner, renunciation of
the unworthy must include a ceasing from action even
within. The Western passivist still believes in inner
experience as having the essence of the divine. The Eastern
passivist often finds this, too, but finite and delusive. The
holy rest is not even a movement all within ; it is stillness
absolute.

To say that mystics lay stress on feeling as the element
in man through which he can best approach divinity is thus
no full account. The emptiness that seems to many the
nearest approach to God is often, in its ideal at least, not
even feeling, any more than thought. It is a blank form
which might still be called existence, but from which
all substance and contents have utterly disappeared. Con-
tempt is heaped on morality, not only as an external thing,
but as internal; despicable is all preference, all purpose,
all enjoyment — all consciousness in any and every form.
Here in the region of emotion and of will there thus takes
place a movement similar to one which is so familiar in the
intellectual realm. As thought seems to some a limit and
restraint, an essentially cramping and belittling thing ; and,
in consequence, is unable to bring before us what is greatest
and most real ; so feeling and purpose are often by the
mystic regarded as of like impotence to bring man near to
Unity and Truth.

The character of religious passivity might be better
understood were we to see its connection with different
strains of human nature. There are men whose impressions
readily pass "over into action. Every sensation and what-
ever else arises in the mind is, at its very birth, seized upon
and forced to be part of some intention. And in intentions
or purposes we are but showing ourselves active, perhaps
aggressive, toward our surroundings. The opposite type

176 Psychology of the Religious Life

of mind organizes its life in a different way. What appears
before the mind need not here contribute to a purpose ;
for purposes or intentions are now not dominant, but are
themselves subdued and made tributary to states of feeling
and thought. It is customary in some of our recent psy-
chology to regard muscular activity as the end and aim of
all things ; and such a description fits, in a way, the com-
moner style of mind. But this must not conceal the other
type, whose energies run more to appreciation and reflection,
where the force is spent within and seems pure passivity,
although there is no absolute passivity as long as there is
life. Such contemplative minds are more apt to see the
ideal under the form of beauty or of logical self-sufficiency,
rather than of creative power and governmental force.
And by its very nature such an Ideal, in return, seems
to claim the appreciative rather than the active side of
man.

It would be but little more than putting the same thought
in another form were we to say that by far the larger part
of mankind habitually identify both themselves and others
with what can be seen and outwardly accomplished ; while
a contrasting group, though never able to cut themselves
completely off from such externals, yet set more store by
the thoughts and feelings of men. The real person is here
felt to be the man unseen, and there is a value in situations
only imagined, in mere longings, in purposes which move
toward no outer goal. Robert Louis Stevenson in a letter to
Archer well illustrates the type. " To me, morals, the
conscience, the affections, and the passions are, I will own
frankly and sweepingly, so infinitely more important than
the other parts of life, that I conceive men rather triflers
who become immersed in the latter." And then he adds :
" To me, the medicine bottles on my chimney and the blood
on my handkerchief are accidents ; they do not colour my
view of life."1 The opposition of type we are here con-
sidering has also been brought out by Binet in some ex-
1 Letters, ed. Colvin, 1899, 1, 440 f.

The Inner Sources of Passivity 177

periments upon his two girls, Marguerite and Armande — the
one living in a world of common, sensible fact, the other
in a region of sentiment, of memory, and imagination.1
Here, under like outward circumstance and training,
appears the same contrast which is found in the world at
large between the practical men of affairs, and the dreamers
— musicians, poets, seers. Each class finds it difficult to
understand the other, although occasionally a man is born
to both orders of life, like Leonardo da Vinci.

Even among scientists something of this contrast may be
discerned ; although here we have already entered a region
where normal free activity is much restrained. The kind of
mind which feels at home only among things that can be
seen and handled, if it enters a scientific career takes
to the study of minerals, the earth, the behaviour of solids
and fluids, of plants and the bodies of animals and men.
The opposite type is apt to find such studies relatively dull,
and turns instead to the great fields that are more intimate
with human feelings, with ideas and ideals — mathematics,
logic, history, politics, aesthetics, metaphysics. It is
traditional to think of mathematics as peculiarly hard and
unvital ; yet when one associates with mathematicians,
and compares them with men whose sympathies are more
with physical science, he is struck with the freer inner life,
not far from poetry, which often seems to go with high
mathematical talent. The mathematicians are the mystics
of science, moving about in worlds not realized, and seem
guarded from that atrophy of aesthetic feeling which Darwin,
in later life, noted in himself with regret. This difference
of mental constitution which leads some men to the sciences
that have in the forefront observation and the manual
control of apparatus, while others are attracted to sciences
whose more exclusive instrument is critical reflection, helps
to explain the recurrent coolness between natural science
and philosophy. And among philosophers themselves the
broad division between empiricist and rationalist, between

1 Binet : L' 'etude experimental de I' intelligence, 1903.

N

178 Psychology of the Religious Life

materialist and idealist, is perhaps connected with this
variation of response — as of those different parts of plants,
that grow, some toward and others away from earth ; or
those animals, some seeking while others shun the light.
Of those who, by the very fact of becoming philosophers,
have turned from the world of action and possession, some
look back, and the old fondness is reawakened. The idealist
is, by this test, the only true philosopher ; for in him the
type comes to its purity : he is of inward interest not only
in setting his heart upon an inner and speculative life, but,
still further, in that he makes this inner life to be the very
stuff of which the outer universe is made. To most men,
with their sense of value and reality so differently adjusted,
this seems too fantastic for serious thought ; it is refuted, as
by Dr. Johnson, by stamping on the floor. Idealism seems
an attempt to construct the world from the stuff of dreams.
But the outer world, which to the natural man seems the
most real of all things, may to others appear after all not
unlike a dream. The sense of reality is one of the many
mysterious things about the mind — what it is, and why its
changefulness. One often hears the question asked, whether
beauty exists without, or lies only in our appreciation.
But the realness of things is a no less subtle quality, and
seems to require some nicety of adjustment in us, if we are
to feel it as others do. Certainly in dreaming there is
often given us this feeling of reality hardly diminished.
And in the waking state some disturbance of the mind
may draw all substance from things seen and heard and
handled, leaving them the thinnest shadows. Mental
disease may bring with it this sense of unreality in an ex-
treme form, where all the world seems utterly detached and
shadowy. 1 This is doubtless due to some mysterious altera-
tion, not of the outer senses, but of the feelings, and of the
power to bring the particulars of experience mentally into
some connection with the central node of interest. For this

1 See, e.g., James : Varieties of Religious Experience, 1902, pp. 63 ff. ;
Town : " Three Delusional States," Psychological Clinic, I, 198 ff.

The Inner Sources of Passivity 179

reason even the gossamer of dreams seems real so long as it
holds together and possesses without dispute the whole
field of consciousness and the attention. The dream floats
off on waking, because now a web of experience comes in,
with which it can offer no successful rivalry, which at
once stirs in us a lively interest in its pattern of fuller
meaning. Some would affirm that this greater significance
of certain things, which makes us call them real, is due to
their power to compel us to action. Whether this or its
opposite is true — whether the action may be quite as much
a result of the sense of importance, as its cause — we may leave
for others to discuss. But for understanding the religions of
passivity and of action, it is interesting to note that action
and passion are closely joined with changes in the feeling
of what is real. And religion, which is the great assertion
of what is most real and of most importance in the universe
is also the great incentive and disturber of action. When it
gives added value to this life, and stirs our appreciative
powers, in making it appear an appanage of Heaven, then
it makes action vigorous. But when the brilliancy of the
Ideal makes the eyes incapable of seeing colour or worth in
the world about, then passivity is the natural outcome.
Religion, which must always, sooner or later, shift the
centre of value farther from the facts of vegetative and
sensuous life, does by that very fact give some shift and
disturbance of the centre of reality and of the focal point
of action. With the passivists this transfer of the sense of
reality away from the seen, and forward to the unseen, has
been carried to the uttermost. The perceived world grows
less and less important, until its hard reality passes off into
a filmy tissue of illusion. For many of the mystics the
world is thus but a passing show. " By and by comes the
great awakening, and then we find out that this life is really
a great dream," says the Chinese Chuang Tzu ; " Fools
think they are awake now, and flatter themselves they know
if they are really princes or peasants. Confucius and you
are both dreams ; and I who say you are dreams — I am but

1 80 Psychology of the Religious Life

a dream myself."1 " All is empty, all the world is like a
phantasy," we are told in a Chinese version of the Buddha's
life.2 The fading away of the reality of this world, which in
the pathological may be due to a deadening of feeling and a
failure of interest everywhere, is due in the case of religion
to no lack of feeling or want of interest, but to their com-
plete absorption in a world apart from common life.

But often the shift of the sense of value is in another
direction. When man turns his look from himself to the
majesty of God, there is still an outwardness of interest.
But it is not outward in the sense of being directed toward
the showy, the superficial. It is away from the self, as
friendship is away, in that it is unselfish. Passivity may also
spring, however, not from a contempt of all that man can do,
but from an exaggerated value set upon the self. The self
is so precious that at all cost it must be protected and
brought to perfect independence.

Such an exaggerated self-importance does not, however,
normally lead to inaction, but to the opposite. When one
feels this inner value, and that a heritage so precious must
not be left to the uncertainty of chance dependence, there
are opposite ways along which this feeling leads. More
often the person becomes domineering, and seeks to attain
true independence by making the world's will bend to his.
The self can be content if it can bring things into harmony
with itself, by subjugating and impressing upon them a new
form ; such conquering egotism has often been ascribed to
Bonaparte. But the self in its egotism may seek inde-
pendence by retreat as well as by giving battle. How shall
I attain my ends ? By having none for the world to defeat.
How may craving be completely stilled ? Not by seeking
what is desired, but by killing desire itself. Repression of
all the natural impulses is here the way of freedom, and thus
passivity again is reached, but by a somewhat different path.
Such motives, while not the only ones, were strong in

1 Chuang Tztt : tr. Giles, 1889, p. 30.

2 Fo-Sho-Hing-Tsan-King, IV, 18 (XIX, 204 f.).

The Inner Sources of Passivity 1 8 1

Stoicism with its quiet acceptance of whatever the world
might bring, its discovery of virtue in the balance and dignity
of a quiet inner life. These motives were also strong in that
more exalted and emotional stoicism of Buddha : ' Stop
then, the end by choking up the source. Desire not either
life or its opposite ; the raging fire of birth, old age, and
death burns up the world on every side." x By the power
within himself, and by help of none else, each is to attain
that bliss in which all action, all feeling, all thought has
passed away.2 Thus there is here self -glorying that works
to the same end as self-contempt. In this strange manner
extremes meet, and passivity here comes from the very
study of self-possession and the rooting-out of the deepest
social feeling ; for others it comes of self-effacement,
of an overpowering sense of the importance of others, a
sense of man's dependence upon a Power not himself, that
works for righteousness.

At its extremity, then, the love of independence may
appear exactly like the love of dependence, both of which
are strong in human nature and come to fullness in religion.
It is difficult for the stalwart champions of individual free-
dom to believe that any can be so low as to enjoy and intel-
lectually approve the dependence of themselves. Yet this
feeling is certainly present in some men and in many women,
and is perhaps the greatest obstacle in the way of those who
would arouse women to take their ' rights.' The privilege
of having someone else to bear the brunt and worry of events
doubtless is enjoyed by that feminine side which belongs to
normal men. It helps to reconcile so many to fatalism and
predestination. It is also no small incentive to passivity
in religion. The temptation to enjoy the bliss of doing
nothing, knowing that another is the very Agent, must be
one to which some natures are peculiarly unguarded. At
once the care and fret of the tangled skein of things is
handed over to another ; as though weak Hamlet had

1 Fo-Sho-Hing-Tsan-King, IV, 18, 1447 (XIX, 204 f.).

2 See p. 34.

1 82 Psychology of the Religious Life

suddenly found some nobler and stronger kinsman to right
the wrong. This relief, which in some measure is a rightful
consolation of religion, in the passivist goes farther ; it
becomes a shirking of responsibility. The divine presence,
which is the proper supplement where our own powers
begin to fail, becomes an occasion for sloth, or for careless-
ness of the quality of action. The lawless conduct of the
Antinomian with his contempt for common morals, which
has so often disgraced religion, is thus a way in which this
untempered spirit of irresponsibility may work itself out in
natures that have no leaning toward passivity. Religion,
which on the whole is a great support of morals, may by
making too little of human power and responsibility lead
back to utter looseness, especially where passion is stirred
to its depths. The laxity of practical morals — of which
Uchimura complains among the converts of Japan,1 and
which has been known in New England and even in Palestine
— is thus like reverent passivity in that it sets small value
upon actions. It is part of that abuse and aberration to
which all good things are subject.

With the sense that quietness is the soul of life, there
often goes, too, an amazing mistrust of change. Apparently
there is in human character a strange polarity by which
some crave change while others dread it. Those who praise
inaction seem moved to do so partly from the dislike of the
mere disturbance which goes with deeds. If one acts, he
must in some measure violate the present order, must
seize upon it and shake it into another form. And he who
even in his piety is conservative to the heart and hates
upheaval, will here find occasion for avoiding acts. Indeed,
change and variety and difference are objects of aversion
to many, as marks of finitude and evil. The Chinese mystic
Chuang Tzii regards evil as a kind of confusion. The causes
of the loss of man's original Tightness, he holds, are five
in number : ' The five colours confuse the eye, and the eyes
fail to see clearly. The five sounds confuse the ear, and the

1 Diary [1895], p. 93.

The Inner Sources of Passivity 183

ear fails to hear accurately. The five scents confuse the nose,
and obstruct the sense of smell. The five tastes cloy the
palate, and vitiate the sense of taste. Finally, likes and
dislikes cloud the understanding, and cause dispersion of
the original nature. These five are the banes of life."1 And
for the Buddha, at least as he appears in some of the sacred
literature, it is the change of things that seems the most
pitiable feature of them : ' Impermanence is the nature of
all that exists, constant change and restlessness its con-
ditions ; unfixed, unprofitable, without the marks of long
endurance."2 And again he says, apparently with pity :
"All things around us bear the stamp of instant change ;
born, they perish ; no self -sufficiency ; those who would
wish to keep them long, find in the end no room for doing so.
If things around us could be kept for aye, and were not
liable to change or separation, then this would be salvation."3
We here have the thought — unusual, especially in a moralist
— that it is the mere changefulness of the things about us,
rather than any other quality or insufficiency in them that
makes them unworthy of desire. If the one element, varia-
tion, could only be expelled, peace would be attained. And
so the devotee must seek the changeless state. The wise
man's learning, then, is " to acquire the changeless body ;
for where no change is, there is peace. Thus the possession
of this changeful body is the foundation of all sorrow."4
And while at times there comes the passing thought of
a changeless existence, of a mystical world that cannot
be destroyed,5 yet the chief consolation, after all, is in the
thought that complete destruction will bring complete rest.
The disciples are told to give not way again to sorrow,
because complete destruction of the universe must
come.6 And after the Nirvana of Buddha, a Devaputra

1 Chuang TzQ, tr. Giles, 1889, p. 155.

2 Fo-Sho-Hing-Tsan-King, V, 24, 1880 (XIX, 274).

3 Ibid., 24, 1862 f. (XIX, 271).

4 Ibid., IV, 20, 1654 (XIX, 238).

6 Ibid., cf. V, 27, 2207 (XIX, 324).
6 Ibid., V, 26, 2097 (XIX, 306).

1 84 Psychology of the Religious Life

sounded forth in the midst of space the sad, triumphant
message :

" Impermanency is the nature of all things, quickly born,

they quickly die.
With birth there comes the rush of sorrows, only in quiet

extinction is there joy." x

To the Western mind such desires would seem almost
incomprehensible ; for with many of us change seems
almost the summum bonum, and monotony the chief of evils.
Indeed, there has been some want of sympathy with the
earlier Christian pictures of Heaven just because too little
provision was made for activity and progressive change
and serious endeavour ; it seemed too much a place of rest.
From this and from the fluctuations which we observe in our-
selves— since in some states of mind mere rest seems bliss,
while at other times it is intolerable— we can well believe
that there are types of character that are permanently
magnetized in opposite ways. That type which at its best
shows a noble restlessness, becomes in its pettier instances
a thirst for continual happening and excitement, such as
city life supplies. While even with us the opposite temper
appears in those whose delight is to live lifelong away in
some quiet valley. The normal balance of movement and
rest shows in many men a variety of proportion, and in
some there almost ceases to be any proportion at all, since
they seem to desire permanently nothing but repose or
change.

Now for the lovers of the changeless, the inner life offers
a better refuge than the outer. The world of men is petulant
and fickle ; and even Nature, though calm in fixed moun-
tains and in starry heavens, is still fitful in winds and storms
and seasons, and in the restless sea. But in the inner life, if
one could only bring to subjection the passions and all
vagrant images and thoughts — and they look as if they

1 Fo-Sho-Hing-Tsan-King, V, 27, 21 16 f. (XIX, 309), using the marginal tr.

The Inner Sources of Passivity 185

might be subdued — there is promise of repose. In the dull
drone of organic feeling, or the still deeper undertoneYof
sentiment that often remains the same for life, or in the
fixity of moral interest or of intellectual linkage, there is
an air of permanence that seems to offer the longed-for
rest. The mind affirms that within itself it finds a closer
likeness to the Ideal which is unchanging. Or, rather, here
within is felt the very presence of the Ideal itself. The
passivist thus finds something nearer his heart's desire
by withdrawal from the acts and changes of the world.

The more naive attitude is to accept growth and change
and action as a matter of course, and to withhold no admira-
tion because of them, but rather the reverse. The gods in
Homer are born and have their plans and disappointments,
their defeats and successes. The Ideal here is a world of
movement. But while movement need not disappear from
the ideal world even of the most enlightened, yet we do
find along with and underneath the movement an ever-
growing sense of permanence, until with some the perman-
ence completely drives out all change and inner motion.
The stern sense of Unity, as against number and variety in
the Divine, is in part but an aspect of this appreciation of
fixity, which, in its effort to exclude clash and discord and
distraction, often excludes the very elements of life, its
inner play and richness. As character develops, it lays more
stress on law and order, on purposes that are not in need of
constant readjustment ; on principles — like those for com-
putation and for the scientific understanding of men and
nature — that do not for ever require to be revised. And
thus the Ideal seems, more and more, to reveal a unitary
and changeless character. Those who make changelessness
the supreme and only good are thus peculiarly responsive
to one side of the Ideal ; and the worshippers of change
are appreciative of the other.

The height to which changelessness is elevated in the
character of Divinity is thus a sign of the distress with which
change is regarded. But in its turn the insistence on the

1 86 Psychology of the Religious Life

unchanging features in the Divine reacts upon human
character, moulding it by imitation. If God has no need
beyond himself — if he is self -existent, self-contained, un-
moving, without desire — then it seems fit and honourable
for men to be like him in their want of action. They, too,
in rest are coming nearer to that state which is above the
pettiness of time. Thus the conscious imitation of the
ideal peace must be numbered among the many causes
which unite to bring about quietness in religion. The pas-
sivist moreover lives as if for him the great defect of many
religionists were their failure to keep themselves in check,
and let the divine energy have free course — and as if in
his own way he were intent to set a right example by doing
justice to the receptive, the respectful, the unofncious side
of worship. Often, however, there is no thought of being
an example to anyone. The quiet life is the direct and un-
critical outcome of character and of sensitiveness to the
ideal, uncompensated by powers of practical expression.

For there appear in life two distinct results which feeling
may produce. It may lead to heightened action, as where
fear gives fleetness — this where the emotion is not too great
to block the exits. Or it may, when in greater volume, or
in minds and brains whose channels of discharge are less
capacious, produce an instant stoppage and something of
that death-like stillness which often comes with supreme
and sudden danger. This, doubtless, is part of the explana-
tion of religious quietness, when it is not a studied thing.
Yet it would be incautious to make such a feature too
prominent, when we recall from how many sources religious
passivity comes — from self-poise, as well as from its loss ;
from stoic self-sufficiency, as well as from a sense that we
are as nothing in the presence of the Divine, and that our
actions may well cease, sharing as they do the worthlessness
of all that is human and mundane ; from an interest some-
how divorced from the external world, whereby this is left
a kind of phantasm, powerless to compel our action ;
from a native immobility of interest and attention,

The Inner Sources of Passivity 187

an unreadiness of readjustment, leading to grave dis-
comfort in the present of change of any kind.

At the close of this part of the study, it might be well,
even at the risk of wearying by repetition, to review the
features more prominent in religious action and in the
attitude of religion toward action. When religion becomes
disengaged from sorcery and attains a certain dignity of
its own, ceremonial comes to occupy a large place in man's
intercourse with divinity, and finds support because it
answers to many inner needs. But with all its ministry,
there are cravings which it fails to satisfy ; and many men
turn from it to act in ways that are useful to their fellows,
and this turning away is due to many motives other than
a love of men.

Besides the forces leading to an attitude like this, religious
action comes under other influences. It is affected by what
I have called the feminine and the masculine temper — timid
of change and action, and eager for it. There is, moreover,
for many reasons, an overmastering desire to retain old
forms of action, even though they be stifling all that is
vital ; while against this is the spirit, especially manifest in
the great leaders, the reformers, that would bring to free-
dom the life behind the act. Religious action is affected,
too, by the different values which men place upon what is
particular and finite, and by their attention or inattention
to the particular. For inasmuch as action is always special
and here and now, then, if men have an eye only to the
boundless, there is no longer any occasion or object of
endeavour. And men act more vigorously if they think
action not beneath them, nor yet entirely above them and
coming solely from God — though the thought that all is
predestined does not of itself make men passive.

Thus a deep cleft has appeared in the ways of access to
divinity. For some, there is an interest outward and a
striving for external accomplishment pleasing to the gods.
For others the attention goes wholly to the unseen, and no

1 88 Psychology of the Religious Life

value is set upon all this outer show ; in quietness now is
strength. Opposed to the religion of effort and the out-
ward look is that of quiet and the inward look. For the
one type, life appears to call for deeds ; it is a warriors'
field. For the other, the better part of living is found only
as one checks his hindering struggle to attain the good,
and lets this flow in upon him. Here the true form even
of earthly society is a church receptive, a church at rest.

This distrust of acts, however, is clearly but a side, a
negative side, of the full state of mind. With it and com-
pleting it, there is usually the desire of knowledge. Reverent
men turn from outward activity, for the most part, because
of a longing for an inner light, indeed often an inner free
activity, which mere conduct seems to hinder. But whether
this knowledge seem an active grasp of the truth, or seem
an illumination while they are passive, in either case we are
already within the confines of thought. The further course
of our study takes us to this inward process of the intellect.

PART III

CONFLICTS IN REGARD TO RELIGIOUS
THOUGHT

CHAPTER XIII

SOME STAGES OF RELIGIOUS THOUGHT

AMONG the powers stirred by the presence of greatness,
A\. thought plays an important, though perhaps no
dominant, role. Yet if we can trace carefully its action
the whole of religion will better be understood. So our
interest through all the chapters following will be upon the
character of the thought that appears in religion, and of the
influences that give it form. And to that end first of all
some of the changing appearances of thought in this region
should be illustrated — thought's vigorous eminence in some
forms of reverence, and again its appearance dim and
scarcely discernible either because not yet set apart and
cultivated or because stifled by rank overgrowth of that
amongst which it must live.

Myths are hardly intellectual in the sense in which most
men understand the word ; for usually they are the
uncritical, spontaneous setting-forth of thought in stories.
Yet faint traces of intellect in religion are already noticeable
in myth, the theology of early men. The religious thought
here concealed does nor exist in the form of judgment and
reasoning only, but in the form of ideas of many degrees
and kinds, and conjoined in ways with which logic has but
little interest or sympathy. Only with a catholic and
tolerant sense of what is meant by thought, or intelligence,
can one notice its rich abundance in this realm of religious
story. , ;.•_.-.

Yet the myths which deal with the great courses of

191

192 Psychology of the Religious Life

nature show occasionally thought reaching almost the
border of science. The representation of heaven and earth
as a wedded pair is derived in part at least from an intellec-
tual perception of likeness — from personification guided by
analogy. Men notice that the earth becomes fruitful by
the influence of the sky with its light and warmth, its dew
and rain ; and since a most striking instance of fruitful
energy is seen in human generation, early men think of
natural fertility as a marriage of the elements. And this is
the beginning of the scientific spirit — the interest in causes
and in explanation ; for there is here a crude theory of an
observed fact, namely that the earth brings forth abun-
dantly. The mystery of nature's fruitfulness is thus solved
and simplified by regarding it as a process like that involved
in human birth. In this the savage naively follows the
method of the savant who is pleased to make some novel
and puzzling fact appear as but another instance of a group
of facts already known. The explanatory interest is an
important feature in all myths that tell how the world was
formed — by clever workmanship of some god, busy at his
forge or his potter's wheel ; or it was fished from the sea
with hook and line, or it issued from a gigantic egg. Again,
some special process of nature may be explained ; as the
tides, in the Malay myth, by the regular emerging of an
enormous crab from a cavern in the depths of the sea, and
his return to this cavern j1 or the winds, in the Iroquois
myth, by the struggles of a great captive spirit, whose
frantic efforts set all the air in motion.2 The explanatory
interest is more concealed in myths like those of Proserpina
or Osiris, which are supposed to represent the death of
vegetation ; yet here, too, are ideas made familiar by
human life, but carried by imagination to a greatness ex-
ceeding man's.

Often the myth is not explanatory at all, but is perhaps
a gratifying and imaginative enlargement of familiar

1 Skeat : Malay Magic, 1900, pp. 6 f.

2 Morgan : League of the Iroquois, 1851, pp. 159 f.

Some Stages of Religious Thought 193

human adventure, as when the hero goes hunting for some
enchanted moose, or for a fire-breathing stallion. Or the
myth may set forth in story and picture some form of
primitive belief — as when in the Finnish tale1 the hair-
brush of Lemminkainen bleeds when he is mortally wounded
— an instinctive representation of that union of fortune
which is supposed to exist between a man and his near
possessions.

Indeed, the myth-makers are all the while uncon-
sciously expressing in their stories their own belief — and
chief of all, that life and the forms and motives of conscious
intercourse are the deepest facts of the universe. Involun-
tarily the early mind regards the whole world, which for us
is partly animate and partly inanimate, as living, through
and through, and for the most part like man himself. The
winds driving the rain-clouds are heroes driving before them
cows with flowing udders. The sun is a great adventurer
who slays the dragon night.

But not only does thought lie hidden in the stories of
early men, but it appears more openly, as a recognized
means of accomplishment. The approach to this is doubt-
less gradual ; and before thought is sought out and viewed
as potent, other actions of the man have come to be re-
spected. The hand, the eye, the voice, the word articulate,
are early perceived to be powerful for good or ill. But
deeper than these, some hidden power within is felt to be
still mightier.

Among certain Indian tribes the women assemble when
the men are away and in peril ; and by fixing their thoughts
upon the absent ones and expressing these thoughts in
song, they send strength to their warriors and help them
to victory.2 Maximilian heard among the Mandans how
prayer had first arisen. Attacked by their enemies, they
needed the help of their great forefather who had gone far

1 Kalevala, Rune XV (Crawford, 201 f.)-

1 Fletcher : Indian Story and Song, 1900, pp. 81 ff. ; Indians' Book
ed. Curtis, 1907, p. 102.

194 Psychology of the Religious Life

into the west. One of their number proposed to send a
bird to him ; but no bird could fly so far. Another believed
that the absent one might be reached by glance of the eye,
but the prairie and the hills set bounds to the eye. Then
spoke a third : " Thoughts are the surest means of reaching
him." Whereupon he prostrated himself, wrapped in his
buffalo-skin, and said : " I think. — I have thought. — I re-
turn." He threw aside the skin, bathed in sweat, and the
longed-for Helper came.1 The gods of the Rig- Veda create
Agni by the power of their minds, by their thoughts ;2 by
right thought, Agni is pressingly brought hither to help
men ;3 the immortals have created treasure by their
thought.4 And with the Zarathustrans the powers of mind
are distinctly named as worthy of worship : ' We worship
the perception ; we worship the intellect ; we worship
the conscience."5 And if words be revered, not as having
magic power in themselves, but because they are close to
the thoughts that lie behind them, then there is some
reverence to thought also when the Word incarnate is held
in honour : Sraosha, ' holy and strong,' is ' the incarnate
Word ' ;6 and mention is made of " Karesa, the son of
Zbaurvaw^, who was the incarnate Word, mighty speared
and lordly."7 But still more concretely is the power of
mind presented in the Kalevala as working magically
through its knowledge of causes : the mere statement of
the source and origin of any mischievous power breaks its
spell. The bleeding Wainamoinen comes to a cottage to
ask if anyone there can heal his wound. An old man seated
on the hearth answers, that greater things than this have
been done — islands raised, bays formed, cataracts checked —
by telling of their causes. And accordingly the flow of
Wainamoinen' s blood is stanched by telling of the origin

1 Waitz : Anthropologie, III, 206.

8 Vedic Hymns, III, 2, 3 (XLVI, 228).

3 Ibid., 27, 6 (XLVI, 296).

4 Ibid., IV, i, 10 (XLVI, 308).

5 Zend-Avesta, Farvardin Yast, 74 (XXIII, 197).

6 Srosh Yast, 5,18 (XXIII, 165).

7 Farvardin Yast, 106 (XXIII, 209).

Some Stages of Religious Thought 195

of Iron, whence came the wound.1 One of the threats, too,
made against the Frost-Fiend is, that Lemminkainen will
sing this fiend's origin.2 And the same Lemminkainen is
powerless against the dragon that guards the castle of
Pohyola, until the hero sings the origin of the dragon from
the spittle of Suoyatar.3 The utterance of the secret
knowledge of causation is thus the most powerful spell that
can be used. Here is a dim intuition of the mastery which
comes of understanding — comes of knowing, not some
purely meaningless formula, as in common incantation, but
the source and nature of the power that is to be controlled.
In these early fancies we find traces of the scientific im-
pulse, unseparated as yet from poetry and religion.

As men and religion grow older and more reflective, there
comes to be seen some difference between knowledge or
thought that is spontaneous or unlaboured, and that which
is more clearly of effort and the will. And religion is far
readier to see the value of spontaneous or intuitional thought
than of critical and self-conscious thinking. But in time
there comes into the acknowledged service of religion the
intelligence that can no longer be an impulsive play, but
must move more by rule, and under the stern eye of Logic.

The self-conscious thinkers may give their days and
nights to theology, either by attempts directly to advance
the science, or by an untiring interest in the work of those
who lead the way. The essence of religion, for them, is to
have right conceptions and beliefs ; and they often picture
to themselves the Divinity as far more anxious about men's
thoughts than about their feelings and intents. The Scotch,
from whom so many disputants have sprung, have always
been religious in an intellectual way. Their old-time
Sabbaths, with an unbroken line of argumentative sermons,
clearly show this element in their devotion. America, which
Scotland and its ways of thought have greatly influenced,
reveals the type less clearly ; for the moving of home, with

1 Kalevala, Runes VIII and IX.

2 Rune XXX. 3 Rune XXVI.

196 Psychology of the Religious Life

all its cares, has encouraged activity, at some drain upon
reflection. Yet among the New England Puritans religion
was, in a large measure, unquestionably an intellectual
attachment to the Good, it was largely a matter of con-
templation, of reasoning, of creed. In the earlier days, too,
of Christianity there could be found those for whom religion
was largely a way of thinking. The Gnostics were notable
among them, with their claim to clearer mental light, and
their zest for attacking in philosophic spirit the doctrinal
problems which Christianity had started.

But Christians as well as those of other faith have also
shown a different order of mind — where there has been less
of the clank of logical machinery and yet no less of thought,
even if it be smooth-running and unsupervised. The powers
which the person more clearly recognizes as his own are
now held in check, and the thought seems to come from
without. This leads him, rightly or wrongly, to disclaim
responsibility for his intuitions ; he feels that there has
come to him a divine illumination. Mohammed, when men
sneered at the Koran and asked to have some different
revelation, said : " It is not for me to change it of my own
accord ; I do not follow aught but what I am inspired
with ; verily, I fear, if I rebel against my Lord, the torment
of a mighty day ! 'J1 And if errors crept into the Prophet's
message, they were not of him, but of Satan.2 There is little
reason to doubt that this correctly describes his feeling of
the uncontrollable character of his utterances.

And yet, so far as there are contents in the inspiration —
so far as it is a real message, having significance — it is no
mere stir of feeling, but has invaded what psychologists are
fond of calling the cognitive region of the mind. The
definite form and meaning of the inspiration or vision, the
ideas gained perhaps through the voices heard — these in-
tellectual features are to be distinguished from the feeling
which may or may not be their accompaniment. This
intellectual element often seems to stand above the emo-

i Koran, X (VI, 194)- 2 Ibid., XXII (IX, 62).

Some Stages of Religious Thought 197

tional, and religion to be governed by the head rather than
by the heart. For even mystics are by no means all emo-
tion ; the length and intelligibility of the revelations they
receive are clear evidence of the play of intellect. And
often there is a suppression of excitement, or even some-
thing like the calm of untroubled sleep, and the memory
upon awakening retains, well-ordered, the great situation,
the sights and sounds, with the reflections of the entranced
person himself — as in the case of the^Monk of Evesham.1
But perhaps the best instance of mysticism with intellectual
fibre is found in Swedenborg. The man whose early life
was devoted to studies in science shows the temper suit-
able to this in his religious visions. Heaven and Hell are
described, chapter on chapter, in the spirit of a scientist
reporting observations to some Royal Society. Nothing
could well be calmer or more ' objective ' than the way in
which he depicts even the passions of good and evil spirits.
Save for the subject matter, one might seem to be reading
some tractate of the schools.

Signs of this same intellectual spirit, though much ob-
scured, appear in religions of the Orient. The religious
classics of India speak constantly in praise of knowledge,
in the persuasion that salvation comes only by its attain-
ment. Certain rules of the Buddhists lay down, among
the conditions of welfare for their community, that they
must be active in mind, that they must " exercise themselves
in the sevenfold higher wisdom," which includes, among
other things, mental activity, the search after truth, and
earnest contemplation ; they must exercise themselves in
" the sevenfold perception due to earnest thought."2 And
the value placed upon intelligence, although not excluding
a carefulness of conduct, is shown in places like the follow-
ing, the substance of which is repeated like a refrain :
" And whilst the Blessed One stayed there at Ragagaha on
the Vulture's Peak he held that comprehensive religious

1 The Revelation to the Monk of Evesham, 1196, reprint. 1895.
a Maha-Parinibbana-Sutta, I, 9 f. (XI, 9 f.).

198 Psychology of the Religious Life

talk with the brethren on the nature of upright conduct,
and of earnest contemplation, and of intelligence. ' Great
is the fruit, great the advantage of earnest contemplation
when set round with upright conduct. Great is the fruit,
great the advantage of intellect when set round with earnest
contemplation. The mind set round with intelligence is
freed from the great evils, that is to say, from sensuality,
from individuality, from delusion, and from ignorance ! "J
The importance of knowledge — indeed, its inclusion of all
the elements of worship — is well illustrated also from the
' Divine Song ' : " The sacrifice of knowledge, O terror of
your foes ! is superior to the sacrifice of wealth ; for action,
O Son of Pn'tha ! is wholly and entirely comprehended in
knowledge. Even if you are the most sinful of all sinful
men, you will cross over all trespasses by means of the boat
of knowledge alone. As a fire well-kindled, O Arguna !
reduces fuel to ashes, so the fire of knowledge reduces all
actions to ashes. For there is in this world no means of
sanctification like knowledge."2

That the Indian had a strong leaning toward intellectual
activity could not well be doubted by anyone even slightly
acquainted with the Upanishads, where religion and subtle
reflection merge. Yet we must be on our guard against
interpreting this expression ' knowledge,' so prominent
in Indian reverence, as though it meant what we should
call pure intellect or reason. For in the Bhagavadgita,
from which we have just heard such praise of know-
ledge as might have been uttered by some ardent rationalist,
there is included under knowledge, not only what we of
the West would regard as proper to it, but matters that to
our minds seem foreign to knowledge — cleanliness, and
aversion toward assemblages !

Some of the more careful directions for attaining know-
ledge will give a clearer idea of what is meant. The sage
" excludes from his mind external objects, concentrates the

' 1 Maha-Parinibbana-Sutta, I, 12 (XI, 11), and in other places, e.g. I,i8
(XI. 14 f.)-

8 Bhagavadgita, IV (VIII, 62), w. omiss.

Some Stages of Religious Thought 199

visual power between the brows, and making the upward
and downward life-breaths even, confines their movements
within the nose."1 He is to fix " his seat firmly in a clean
place, not too high nor too low, and covered over with a sheet
of cloth, a deer-skin, and blades of Kusa grass," is to hold
his mind " exclusively on one point, with the workings of
the mind and senses restrained " ; he should hold his
body and neck unmoved, and " looking at the tip of his
own nose," think of — nothing at all !2 In his meditation
he is to ' place the life-breath in the head/ and continually
repeat the single syllable ' Om.' 3 " By that syllable does
the threefold knowledge proceed. When the Adhvaryu
priest gives an order, he says Om. When the Hotn' priest
recites, he says Om. When the Udgatn priest sings, he
says Om — all for the glory of that syllable. The three-
fold knowledge proceeds by the greatness of that syllable,
and by its essence."4 Elsewhere it is advised that the
devotee direct his eyes on a circle of earth or water or of
fire until he can see the circle as well with closed as with
open eyes.5

This repetition of the soporific syllable Om ; the gazing
at a circle until it can be seen as well with closed as with
open eyes — these are devices well fitted to produce in the
mind, not what we should recognize as intellectual keen-
ness, but hypnosis ; its outcome is not active and critical
judgment, but a state where certain inner objects fascinate
the attention. But with the method urged for the produc-
tion of this ' knowledge/ the sacred writings also describe
with great explicitness the actual state of mind produced,
so we are not left to inference or conjecture in saying what
it is.

A striking feature of this desired condition is an oblivion
of all external fact. The Buddha in his meditation is un-
conscious of the beating rain, the lightning, and the crash-

1 Bhagavadgita, V (VIII, 66 f.). 2 Ibid., VI (VIII, 68 ff.).

3 Ibid., VIII (VIII, 79). * A'/iandogya-Upanishad, I, i, 9, (I, 3).

8 de la Saussaye : Manual, Engl. tr., 1891, pp. 602 f. ; cf. Maha-
Parinibbana-Sutta, III, 33 ff. (XI, 51 f.).

2OO Psychology of the Religious Life

ing thunder-bolts — so terrific that they kill two peasants
and their oxen close at hand.1 But not only is he with-
drawn from all things outward ; the aim is also to empty
the mind gradually of all contents whatsoever — not worth-
less contents merely, to make room for better thoughts ;
but good and bad alike ; until consciousness becomes
utterly and absolutely blank. The " stages of deliver-
ance ' described by the ' Blessed One ' to the faithful
disciple Ananda will make this clear. Because their details
are so important psychologically, let me quote them in full,
though their length may sorely try some readers' patience :

" Now these stages of deliverance, Ananda, are eight in
number. Which are the eight ?

A man possessed with the idea of form sees forms — this
is the first stage of deliverance.

Without the subjective idea of form, he sees forms exter-
nally— this is the second stage of deliverance.

With the thought ' it is well,' he becomes intent upon
what he sees — this is the third stage of deliverance.

By passing quite beyond all idea of form, by putting an
end to all idea of resistance, by paying no attention
to the idea of distinction, he, thinking ' it is all infinite
space/ reaches and remains in the state of mind in
which the idea of the infinity of space is the only idea
that is present — this is the fourth stage of deliverance.

By passing quite beyond all idea of space being the
infinite basis, he, thinking ' it is all infinite reason/
reaches and remains in the state of mind to which the
infinity of reason is alone present — this is the fifth
stage of deliverance.

By passing quite beyond the mere consciousness of the
infinity of reason, he, thinking ' nothing at all exists/
reaches and remains in the state of mind to which
nothing at all is specially present — this is the sixth
stage of deliverance.

1 Maha-Parinibbana-Sutta, IV, 40 ff. (XI, 78 f.).

Some Stages of Religious Thought 201

By passing quite beyond all idea of nothingness, he
reaches and remains in the state of mind to which
neither ideas nor the absence of ideas are specially
present — this is the seventh stage of deliverance.

By passing quite beyond the state of ' neither ideas nor
the absence of ideas,' he reaches and remains in the
state of mind in which both sensations and ideas have
ceased to be — this is the eighth stage of deliverance.

Now these, Ananda, are the eight stages of deliverance."1

Later the ' Blessed One ' himself passes through stages of
' meditation ' corresponding to these of ' deliverance,' and
the utter emptying of the mind is again described at great
length, with some slight difference of detail ;2 but I spare
the reader.

In these accounts the chief insistence is upon the want of
all ideas. At other times not only are ideas swept away,
but there is an utter sweeping away of all feeling — the
devotee becomes rid not only of pain, but rid even of a
feeling of ease or repose :

' Now the Great King of Glory," it is related to Ananda,
' ascended up into the chamber of the Great Complex ;
and when he had come there he stood at the door, and
there he broke out into a cry of intense emotion :

' Stay here, O thoughts of lust !
Stay here, O thoughts of ill-will !
Stay here, O thoughts of hatred !

Thus far only, O thoughts of lust !
Thus far only, O thoughts of ill-will !
Thus far only, O thoughts of hatred ! '

And when, Ananda, the Great King of Glory had entered
into the chamber of the Great Complex, and had
seated himself upon the couch of gold, having put
away all passion and all unrighteousness, he entered

1 Ibid., Ill, 33-42 (XI, 51 f.). z Ibid., VI, 11 (XI, 114 f.).

202 Psychology of the Religious Life

into, and remained in, the First Ghana. — a state of joy
and ease, born of seclusion, full of reflection, full of in-
vestigation.

By suppressing reflection and investigation, he entered
into, and remained in, the Second GAana — a state of
joy and ease, born of serenity, without reflection,
without investigation, a state of elevation of mind, of
internal calm.

By absence of longing after joy, he remained indifferent,
conscious, self-possessed, experiencing in his body that
ease which the noble ones announce, saying, ' The
man indifferent and self-possessed is well at ease/ and
thus he entered into, and remained in, the Third
GMna.

By putting away ease, by putting away pain, by the
previous dying away both of gladness and of sorrow,
he entered into, and remained in, the Fourth Ghana. —
a state of purified self-possession and equanimity, with-
out ease and without pain."1

The prominence of ' knowledge,' then, in this Eastern
devotion must not deceive us into the thought that here we
find worship made purely intellectual. That the Oriental
mind, with all its subtlety, finds itself unnourished by
reasonableness, according to our Western standards, has been
recognized by a Japanese observer who had some oppor-
tunity to know both East and West : " To us Orientals,
who depend more upon our sight than upon logic for the
establishment of Truth," writes Uchimura in his Diary,2
" the philosophy that I was taught in my New England
College is of comparatively little use in clearing up our
doubts and spiritual phantasmagorias. I believe nobody
made a greater mistake than those Unitarian and other
intellectually-minded missionaries, who thought that we
Orientals are intellectual peoples, and hence we must be
intellectually converted to Christianity. We are poets and

1 Maha-Sudassana Sutta, II, 3-7 (XI, 271 f.). 2 p. 144.

Some Stages of Religious Thought 203

not scientists, and the labyrinth of syllogism is not the path
by which we arrive at the Truth." But as even the West
produces at rare times a poet, so the East is not without its
appreciation of the coldest intellectual ways. A Japanese
who has attained distinction in his native land once told
me that in his younger days he found a kind of Bible in
Mill's Logic !

And so we seem to have reached the opposite pole to that
from which we started. If myth may be called the dawn of
religious thought, such mysticism as we have just seen
with all its solemn repressions might be the twilight. And
between the two is that noontide of intellectualizing rever-
ence, in which the severe labour of logic is carried on
unremittingly, men seeking first of all to attain their ideal
of holiness by right judgments concerning things divine.

CHAPTER XIV

CAUSES OF THE TRUST AND JEALOUSY OF INTELLECT

IN religion both East and West, thought which is in-
voluntary, free, and uncontrolled is usually ranked
higher than careful and critical thought, or knowledge
gained by observation. In the Zend-Avesta, the heavenly
wisdom is contrasted with the wisdom acquired by the ear.1
And again, the same contrast is expressed as " the under-
standing that goes on growing and the one that is not
acquired through learning."2 There is perhaps nothing
mysterious in this contrast. The senses bring to us the
common facts of life, to which the unseen world of spirits
stands in a certain opposition ; and the appreciation of this
unseen world does not, at least to early men, seem to be
aided by the cultivation of the powers of observation and
of weighing and sifting, which help in practical affairs.
Moreover, there is, for some reason not yet clearly under-
stood, less sense of ownership in these freer acts of ours.
Even in matters of little moment, the effortless thought
is apt to seem, not to be produced by us, but to ' occur ' to
us ; it drops into the mind — Es fallt uns ein. In more
significant affairs, the thought may be ' borne in upon us ' ;
it may seem like a stranger, unattached. The very obscurity
of its preparation may make us readier to disclaim it ; but
doubtless there is something else — some emotional ' scent '
by which it is disowned. In this way thoughts that surely
are of our own making may seem to be foreign to us — perhaps
(where there is the ready belief in spirits close at hand)

1 Sirozah I, 2 (XXIII, 4). 2 Atas Nyayis, 10 (XXIII, 359).

204

Causes of the Trust and Jealousy of Intellect 205

as promptings of Satan, or monitions of some guardian
angel. Or if their worth and tenor to the person appear to
warrant it, these unclaimed ideas may seem to be messages
from God himself. In the more cautious and intentional
of our thoughts — thoughts behind which goes a conscious
urging purpose and a care lest they leave the right path — we
feel activity of our own, and are no more inclined to regard
them as supernaturally brought than is the farmer the cattle
he drives home. The ideas that come and go while we are
passive are therefore more readily attributed to a source
without. And those who can so hold themselves back while
thought flows on of itself, do, in more primitive states of
culture, seem the clearer channels of divine communication.
For this reason women, whose mental processes have over
them a lighter press of inhibition, and are often less bur-
dened with a sense of self-importance and responsibility,
were frequent prophetesses of old, as they are frequent
' mediums ' to-day. The idea of a superior intuition in
women, more spoken of than honoured among men, is
perhaps a vestige of this earlier attitude. The ancient
Germans, differing from the modern, believed that women
had " a certain sanctity and prescience " ; the men did not
' despise their counsels " nor " disregard their answers." 1
Women, however, have rarely or never been great religious
founders and reformers, this being an office which requires
too much isolation of feeling, too much defiance of the
common will. Indeed, the conviction that ideas which come
effortless and without the taint of self are more apt to be
significant has something to support it in fact. Most men's
product from their own little inner smithy is as nothing
compared with the universe of ideas and sympathies into
which they come by inheritance and gift from the great
society of others.

The higher value placed upon those ideas which move
without trace or guide is interesting, not only for its own
sake, but because it helps us to understand the nature of

1 Tacitus : Germania, VIII.

206 Psychology of the Religious Life

that distrust with which the religious have so often viewed
all critical thought and investigation. The studies that are
carried on after the scientific manner may at first have
about them something orphic, as with those early sages of
Greece, who were not merely students of fact, but were
poets and prophets as well. But there soon arises from the
conflict of ideas and from the feeling of personal effort, a
consciousness that the truths of science are discovered by
human power and purpose, and such truths seem distinct
from that body of wisdom which is felt to be independent of
the ear and eye, and is not seen to grow. The distrust of
science is thus favoured by all those instincts which favour
intuitional thought.

But this distrust — the importance of which will warrant
a careful examination — finds strong support, too, in that
feeling of self-disdain, and in all those motives which lead
some reverent men to turn from whatever savours of this
world. For, as has just been said, the method of science
so clearly relies on our natural powers of observation and of
inference, that it must of necessity suffer when human
powers are valued lightly. And when the whole of nature
is regarded as lying outside the limits of divine favour
or interest or creative power — regarded as brought into
existence perhaps by some undivine spirit or demiurge —
then the cheapening of the more common objects of scientific
study adds to the feeling inspired by the cheapness of human
faculty. Science is here singled out in no special way, but
simply shares the common fortune of contempt bestowed on
man and nature.

And this coolness and opposition to all critical investiga-
tion has been strengthened from a slightly different direction.
Even if there had been no direct motive for its existence,
there would have been an indirect increase of coolness
toward natural knowledge, simply by the rush of warmth
and interest toward the heavenly sphere. Attention has
narrow limits, and if it is held by heaven it cannot so well
be directed also to earth. There is here a kind of specializa-

Causes of the Trust and Jealousy of Intellect 207

tion that scientific men at times find difficult, though it
should for them be easy, to understand. From this attraction
heavenward, there is apt to be a deficient interest in history
and in the minuter details of the natural world, wherever
the mystic absorption is strong. Its interest, even when
intellectual, is more in the whole, in the All, the One ;
and the interest in the parts then slackens. And when,
moreover, all responsibility for mundane preservation and
success is thrown entirely on God, one of the common
incentives of investigation — the practical importance and
applicability of scientific truth — is at once removed.

There is, however, another incentive, not to be disregarded,
for the religious check upon free research. The votaries of
science at times believe in their wrath that religious opposi-
tion to their work can spring only from the consciousness
that dogma and, with it, ecclesiastical prestige is in danger.
Such a motive has doubtless had some force with men in
official place ; but deeper and more permanent grounds exist
that are farther from the borders of institutional vanity
and dishonour. The feeling of awe, whether it incline toward
dread or reverence, makes both mind and body hesitate ;
and this for selfish reasons, at first, as well as generous.
Early men were zealous to protect spirits and gods from
prying eyes, partly because misfortune here came of prying.
Such a conviction early and involuntarily springs from the
sense of greatness of divinity — from the belief that the
approach to a god, save in the prescribed way, or when he
intentionally revealed himself, brought dire personal results
— blindness, madness, or death. In early times this belief
is part of that mysterious system of taboo which comes
to invest all greatness. The regalia of chief or king, if
touched by unsanctioned hands, may bring instant death ;
and the objects used in religious rites may have a like
fatality. In general, there is felt to be a hedge about
divinity as there is about the king ; the person is in both
cases sacred, and may not be approached except by those
authorized — by courtiers or priests (the courtiers of the god)

208 Psychology of the Religious Life

— and then only with proper ceremony. But this with time
grows farther away from mere taboo, and nearer to that
common respect for persons and privacy, which is part of
courtesy and morals. The privacy which at first is guarded
in a more physical sense is, with refinement, given a more
spiritual form. Not alone by gross touching or gazing, but
even by the subtler avenues of thought is it wrong to
transgress the bounds fixed by the gods. We must be
satisfied with the knowledge granted, which to them
seems best. For this intelligible reason, of no discredit in
itself to the religious nature, it has often seemed irreverent
to push enquiry far into things divine. When Tacitus would
make clear the difficulty of exploring the German Ocean
and of verifying the rumour that Pillars of Hercules were
on its coast, after speaking of the unsuccessful efforts of
Drusus, he says : " Thereafter no one made the attempt,
and it has seemed more pious and reverent to believe in the
acts of the gods than to pry into them." * In a like spirit
the Turkish Cadi urges the Western traveller to check his
desire to learn what is not known : " Listen, O my Son !
There is no wisdom equal unto the belief in God ! He
created the world, and shall we liken ourselves unto him
in seeking to penetrate into the mysteries of his creation ?
Shall we say, behold this star spinneth round that star,
and this other star with a tail goeth and cometh in so many
years ! Let it go ! He from whose hand it came will guide
and direct it." z Scientific curiosity here appears to the
pious as sheer Topfgukerei in the precincts of the Highest.
The endless bustle of Science, with all its peering and noting,
seems like that of a reporter getting family secrets from the
maid.

For those who wish reverence to be unhindered, there is a
further effect of the intellect, which must be counted of
importance — an effect which brings us to consider again
the interest in causes. Some glow of enthusiasm must

1 Germania, XXXIV.

2 Layard : Nineveh and Babylon, 1853, p. 663 ; cf. James : Principles
of Psychology, 1890. II 640 f..

Causes of the Tritst and Jealousy of Intellect 209

be at the core of any religion that is above mere magic,
or bargaining for tangible goods, and for this reason it
seems to many to be true that feeling is the essence of
religion, and whatever kills off feeling is an enemy of the
faith. Now the Greek temper, so opposed to the Hebraic, is
marked by the dominance not only of the sense of beauty
but of insatiable curiosity. For intelligence does always
in some measure curb the feelings. We cannot say that
intellect is always and inevitably the foe of the emotions,
but it at least subdues and schools them. Wonder and
poetic sentiment may follow in the train of understanding ;
but when we understand an object, we have, in more ways
than we usually are conscious of, ' mastered ' it and made it
ours. The magic narrated in the Kalevala assumes, as we
have seen, that evil can be undone by reciting the causes
which produced it — the wound from steel is cured by
telling of the manner in which the metal came from the
earth and was forged. There is in this a naive expression
of something approaching a mental law, namely, that when
mystery is replaced by scientific understanding, often the
spell is broken, and the object has lost its power over us.
If in reality objects do not become powerless when their
causes have been laid bare, they certainly cease for many
persons to sway the feelings after the older manner. But
since the motive to explain is strong, there may be a waver-
ing between explanation and pious ignorance, as when in the
Rig- Veda the storm gods, the Maruts, are said to be of
unknown birth, and again as born of Rudra,1 or as sons of
Pn'sni.2 And of that mysterious Vata — the breath of the
gods, the germ of the world, whose roar can be heard, but
whose form cannot be perceived — there is the unanswered
question, " Where was he born, whence did he spring ? " 3
and the very absence of an answer seems to increase the awe.
With us, however, this effect of explanation may not be
due primarily to the fact that natural causes are assigned

1 Vedic Hymns, V, 3, 3 (XXXII, 371).
- Ibid., V, 57, 2 L, and V, 58, 5 (XXXII, 340, 343).
3 Ibid., X, 1 68 (XXXII, 449).
P

2io Psychology of the Religious Life

for what before seemed uncaused and mysterious, but
rather that physical and mechanical forces are substituted
for personal agency and will. The thunder which is the
rumbling chariot of some god, and the lightning due to his
gleaming arms, suffer a poetic fall when they are regarded
as phenomena of electric discharge. Even for those who
perhaps believe that the thoughts of Lucretius are nearer
the literal truth, yet his poetry, just because of its attempt
at scientific mechanism, quickens the pulse of most men
in no such way as does the view of nature presented in the
Book of Job. The scientific view has to be revised in terms
of personal power and aim before it can take deep hold of
the affections, as does the modern science deep hidden in
Tennyson's In Memoriam. Some are stirred to the depths
by impersonal order and great mechanical strength ; but
for most of us, life is social, and the feelings are responsive
chiefly to personal appeal.

But quite apart from the particular beliefs enforced,
whether they deal with will or mechanism, the very exercise
of intellect acts as a damper to enthusiasm. As in order
to look or listen intently a man stands motionless, so all
intellectual action requires a restraint and measure of inner
and outer life, a fixity of attention, a controlled order of
ideas, a steadiness of the body and its sensations. In this
respect the intellect, even though it offer stirring truth, is an
agent of sobriety. So that, for all who believe that sincere
worship must be strong in its emotion, there would be this
further ground for distrusting human reason.

But having recounted some of the circumstances in which
religion has cooled the ardour of research, the other side, too,
should be noticed — wherein religion has added warmth.
For in spite of its stepmotherly behaviour, religion has in
some ways been a true parent and patron of studies. In
some cases encouragement has been given on the inglorious
ground of mere utility. The ecclesiastical schools of the
Middle Ages, for example, taught a little mathematics and
astronomy, if for no other purpose than that these were

Causes of the Trust and J ealoitsy of Intellect 211

needed to keep accounts and to arrange in proper time the
festivals of the church. The great buildings which the
church erected gave stimulus, not to painting and decoration
only, but to architecture and engineering. And to religion's
credit must be placed all that intelligent skill which went
into miracle plays and mysteries, as well as into the develop-
ment of music, especially in the hands of men like Palestrina
and Bach. Into these matters, that seem at first apart from
knowledge, there went, in the act of composition as well as
in the response of the hearers, a strength of fresh ideas
and a new strength and meaning in the ideas already at
hand. But in addition to all ecclesiastical inducements to
alertness, there often comes through religion a reinforcement
of the significance and interest of natural things. With some,
as has been said, religion makes the world of fact seem dull
and unattractive ; but with others there is a growing
zest in studying nature because nature now appears in a
warmer light ; as though through its ways man could become
more familiar with the divine manner.

And here it will be of advantage to distinguish two kinds
of science — the one attentive to actual fact, especially of
sense experience, the other aiming at standards by which
the right or wrong, rather than the mere existence, of things
may be adjudged. Now there can be little question that
religion has urged forward those studies that are more con-
cerned with standards of thought and conduct — logic,
ethics, and general philosophy. For all their blundering
check of reason, the followers of religion have desired,
for polemic purposes as well as for inner satisfaction, to
bring into a harmonious system the great ideas with which
religion deals. If systems of religious thought have in the
end become a fetter, this must not conceal the original power
which went into their construction, and the real enlargement
which in earlier days they were able to give men's minds.
We, looking back, feel how cramped we should be, living
within them, and think that they always served men thus.
It is like language, which in some degree limits and stereo-

2 1 2 Psychology of the Religious Life

types our thoughts, but in so doing, must first warm the
mind to expand and fill with its ideas the mould which the
words hold out before us. The twofold influence of system —
its spur and check — is not peculiar to religion, but appears
in scientific theory as well as in the elaboration of party
principles in government. Religious bodies have been
perhaps no more and no less keen for the reorganization of
their dominant ideas than governments have been ; and
if religionists have been more sluggish than scientists
to think out consistent truth, this is, perhaps, because
with science the adequacy of ideas is the only interest in-
volved ; while in religion ideas and their logical harmony
are but one constituent of several, and the interest and
soundness of the whole must be looked to. In this respect,
as being far freer in its movements, science can be constantly
showing the way to religion, so far as religion's way runs
through intellectual ground.

Looking further at the relation between science and
religion, it is clearly seen in history that science in the end
has great influence in the religious sphere. Astronomy
with its enlargement of the world outward, microscopy
with its enlargement of the world inward, have without
argument made many an old idea seem petty. In our own
day we see the rapidly altered view of inspiration and of
the way to interpret holy writ, due simply to an increasing
historical light upon the origin of the Bible. The doctrine
of evolution has also done much to reorganize our ideas
of the spiritual life, making it appear to have in it more of
progress and less of stationary perfection with fewer fixed
and eternal separations. The change of religious conviction
is in such cases less by proof than by a kind of sympathy
with neighbouring ideas.

[f The relation of reverence to intellectual freedom is,
therefore, most intricate, with strong incentives to mutual
coldness and distrust. Yet the incentives toward mutual
confidence are also there, and we may expect that, with the
years, a more perfect comity will be habitual between them.

CHAPTER XV

THE PLACE OF BELIEF

ALTHOUGH so much has just been said of intellect
jL\. and its role, there still remains untouched in regard
to belief an important question upon which men have in the
past been far from agreement. Of what significance is
belief, and what is its office in religion ? A just answer to
this will not be easy, nor can it be stated entirely without
limitation or proviso. And, first, certain facts should be
before us which will perhaps at once somewhat light the
way.

In a number of religions there are gods believed in but
not worshipped1 — sometimes the gods worshipped are evil,
while the god believed to be creator and supreme has no
place nor part in the active cult. Even where religion shows
no clear division of this kind, it may at least approach it.
The Arabs, before the adoption of the Mohammedan belief
in Allah as God alone, believed in Allah as a supreme god
with subordinate divinities, of whom many were patrons of
particular tribes. But Allah himself was the patron of no
tribe ; he had no temple nor priesthood of his own ; and
while his existence was admitted, and certain gifts were
made to him to be distributed in charity, his worship was
hardly to be found.2 Here belief and honour of the supreme
God were almost separate. In China also the Confucian
canon indicates that the greater divinities of Heaven and
Earth, while worshipped by the representatives of the State,
had belief without worship from the private man, who

1 See pp. 291, 301 f. * a Cf. Palmer : Introduction to Qur'dn, pp. xii ff.

213

214 Psychology of the Religious Life

turned rather to his more immediate ancestors. The Roman,
too, in all likelihood paid more honour to his household
gods than to the great divinities of whom Jove was greatest ;
while the Athenians, believing in Zeus as supreme, built
their chief temple to Athene. Such facts indicate something
of the complexity which lies in what we call belief.

The explanation of these inconsistencies is found partly
in a certain contraction and expansion of personality to
which everyone is subject, whereby now we look out on the
world in our isolation, and worship the gods that are im-
portant for our private selves ; and again, there is a stronger
bond with our fellows, and our thought and worship are
controlled by this more public consciousness, going to the
gods that belong to all in common. In both cases it is
belief, but belief which with shifting circumstances changes
its hold upon the mind.

Or, again, there is what might be called a conflict between
judgment and feeling, the person being persuaded intellec-
tually of one set of facts or truths, while another side of
him clamours to have things viewed in a different way — as
a man may know perfectly well, on one side of his mind, that
his door is locked, and yet something within him keep
urging that it may not be so. Such a conflict between
belief and feeling is in reality a kind of divided self, each
part having its own unharmonized beliefs. Often in religion
the discord in belief comes from the fact that value is from
many sources ; and prime creative power, which is so im-
portant for the scientific instinct and which makes the creator
seem the supreme divinity, may be balanced and more than
balanced by the god's failure to sympathize with man. The
nearer and ' inferior ' gods in some religious systems may
really be of superior value for all practical and spiritual
concerns — for real communion and intercourse ; and the
creator be, in a deep sense, the inferior. Worship in that
event goes not to the gods inferior in general, but to those
inferior in one particular point — in physical and originative
power. It goes to the more significant, to the practically

The Place of Belief 2 1 5

prior, according to the worshipper's present knowledge and
affection.

In this we are close upon a distinction, of great importance,
between belief in the existence of the divine object, and
belief in its value. The worshipper usually has belief of
both kinds ; although occasionally we find religion be-
coming an allegiance to an Ideal which is felt to be unreal,
without existence and without the possibility of existence.
Here there is not in any strict sense an absence of belief,
for there still is belief in the supreme value of the object
worshipped ; but there is wanting a belief in its existence.
In insisting on belief, officials of religion may sometimes
fail to distinguish these different forms of judgment, and
may be satisfied with a confession of belief that is merely
an assertion that certain things exist, when there is desired
in addition to this a conviction of their value. When devils
believe and tremble, their belief is largely of existence,
without conviction of supreme worth in the object. If it
were necessary to choose between the two, the needs of
religion would, perhaps, be more fully met by reverence
with no persuasion of external reality than by such per-
suasion that did not adore ; just as the social bond seems
more vital between old-time friends one of whom is now
a mere memory to the other, than between two who believe
in each other's existence and are indifferent. At times
there comes an undue concentration of interest upon belief
implying actual existence. Such belief is of great importance,
but of still greater importance is it to judge sincerely that
the objects of the faith are of transcendent worth. For
these reasons we may say that religion is never without
belief of some kind.

Religion, although it cannot well exist without belief,
may exist without dogma or creed, meaning by these the
teaching and formulation of the belief in reality and value —
just as there may be a mutual honouring of men without
any definite formularies to express their faith in one another.
A number of the great religions, however, have had fixed

216 Psychology of the Religious Life

and stated ways of expressing their view of truth. The con-
fessions and creeds of Christendom illustrate a frequent
desire of the religious, which other faiths have also felt and
satisfied. In the Parsee scripture, one of the chief sins is
knowingly to teach a false creed ;x and there recurs the
formula : "I confess myself a worshipper of Mazda, a
follower of Zarathustra, one who hates the Daevas and
obeys the laws of Ahura,"2 — a confession of personal
attachment and obedience and hate primarily, and of cold
fact only by implication. In the Koran the primary
articles of the faith are often set forth — brief summaries,
not of beliefs alone, but of needful practices as well. The
Muslim creed, in the stricter sense, and rid of all statement
of practical virtues, is compressed into the single sentence :
" There is no god but Allah, and Mohammed his servant is
his prophet."

The confession may from one side be regarded as a kind
of counterpart of the oath of allegiance, which states have
often required ; and the longer statement of doctrine has
its analogue in the ' platform ' of a political party. Like
these secular formulations, the statement of religious belief
common to all the faithful is an aid to mutual recognition
and support. Religion at its best has a programme of social
and personal progress, and needs co-operation, as does any
other work. And if the body is to have strength, some
organization and some test of admission to its privileges
and its duties are felt as a natural need and justifiable.
Looked at in this way the creed may be a means of sifting
out those less in sympathy with the cause — a means far
from ideal, and clearly open to criticism — like property, as
a test of fitness for the ballot. But on the whole, it is
difficult to test what most religionists would in their better
moments count central to true reverence. At the centre of
religion, belief, as a mere admission of existent fact, is no

1 Vendidad, XV, i, 2 (IV, 172).

2 In the introductory formulas to all the Yasts of the Avesta (XXIII,
22, and recurring often).

The Place of Belief 2 1 7

more and no less prominent than love : there is here a
glowing fusion of ideas, or facts perceived, and devotion to
them. And it would be possible to express this unexpressed
side if men wished. Devotion is quite as capable of verbal
utterance as is our thought, and is perhaps no more liable
to simulation or self-deception. The official Christian creeds,
in which there is confession of fact believed, and far
less expression of devotion to them, reveal to what extent
the Church's councils have been dominated by the in-
tellectual and scientific prejudice in favour of the truth
relating to existence, as against the truth which relates to
worth or value. And yet the bond of union among men,
which the creed seems intended to supply, is not so much
a matter of similarity of ideas pure and simple, as it is of
common devotion to a like ideal.

In addition to the uses of formulae as tests and signs of
allegiance and as a means of welding minds, there is found
in them a precise instrument of education. The develop-
ment of proper and exact ideas, if not the whole of educa-
tion, is at least an important part, and religious bodies have
usually attended to this. The young, the proselytes, even
the regular communicants, have in profession and con-
fession the means of raising and sustaining their ideas in
sanctioned form. Other means also are found — the more
detailed truth set forth in scriptures (which every great
religion has) and in the commentaries and expositions of
these ; and in more familiar writing or by direct address
before the congregation, performing for the church what
books and teachers do for secular schools. The homily or
sermon, the oral exhortation, is prominent with Jew,
Mohammedan, and Christian. The great festival gatherings
of these and other religions also have their means of im-
pressing truth by great symbols, by chant or recitation of
priest or people, setting forth doctrine at times abstractly,
but often in picture and in story and in the form of drama.

In regard to this religious handling of ideas, some dis-
tinction ought to be made between the duty of the body

218 Psychology of the Religious Life

to transmit the truth already received, and its duty to
receive fresh truth. The transmissive function has been
the one which the organized body has often taken most
seriously — just as universities so easily run to teaching,
without discovery. The creed and other formulations of
doctrine belong to this transmissive side — where truth is
made definite and portable.

The religious body usually makes little provision for
the growth of the truth in its possession, encouraging
revolution or secession, rather than change by the peace-
ful amendment of its articles. By its stiff-neckedness to-
ward new ideas, the organization often awakens a feeling
which leads many to hold aloof for freedom's sake. The
mystics with their sense of the freshness of truth — that it is
not merely of history or of ancient heritage, but is new-
born to-day and again to-morrow — have been the great
representatives of religious individualism, weak in organiza-
tion. The distinction between priest and prophet in
Hebrew religion shows the double relation in which men
stand to truth — what has already been received must be
handed down unlessened, but the treasury is never so full
that it need be no further enriched. Yet this relation is
perceived in different ways at different times. At the time
of founding, there is a wonderful sensitiveness to new truth ;
and then come long periods of relative fixity. This is due in
part to the need of assimilating the nutriment generously
given. In part it is due to the impressiveness of the founder
and to the sense of authority which he inspires, and some-
times also to his own conviction that his message is final
and sufficient. Thus Mohammed, while recognizing the
value of the truth revealed before his day, had no imagina-
tion for truth later to come : there was to be no prophet
after him. In the account we have of Jesus there is the
distinct warning that what he gives is incomplete. After
his departure a Spirit would come and remain with men,
leading them into a more perfect truth than that which he
had revealed. A doctrine like this may seem to the timid

The Place of Belief 219

dangerous ; but it is far less so than the belief that men's
sight of truth is ever complete.

Our course should now take a somewhat new direction.
In the chapters just brought to a close an attempt has been
made to indicate the place which thought holds in religion :
to show the dawning form of religious beliefs ; the changing
value placed, at different times and by different peoples,
upon effortless intuitive ideas, and upon thought intently
urged and guided by the thinker ; the peculiar nature of
' thought ' with many Oriental devotees ; the hindrance and
help which science and religion have been to each other,
and the causes of their frequent mutual coolness. Leaving
this variety and sweep of questions, the way will now keep
more within one particular region of thought — the repre-
sentation of the Divine. And as every representation or
picture is of interest in at least two different ways — in its
technique, its line, the method and medium which the
artist uses, and, again, in the subject-matter, the objects
and ideas expressed — so here. The portrayal of the divine
world has its own intellectual means and medium, which
will first be described — the variable power and faculty of
religious representation. And only then will the meaning
of the representation be considered, and the great influences
which lead men to their peculiar conception of the divine
character.

CHAPTER XVI

IMAGES OF THE DIVINE

THE mind pursues now one path to reach its purpose
and again comes to its goal by an entirely different
course. In religion this variety of resource is well seen in
the changing modes by which man brings before himself
the beings he reveres. The life of these higher powers is
presented to the mind by sensible objects which are felt
to be the very powers themselves, or else faithful pictures
of them ; or the divinity is set forth in images that make
no claim to literal portraiture but serve as mere suggestions
and emblems of the truth. Or perhaps, at length, in an
impatience of all forms of sense, there is given to the gods a
character quite unknown in the world of outward things, a
character which cannot be depicted even before the inner
eye of the imagination.

No consciousness typically human is either wholly with-
out the images given by the senses or is entirely engrossed
in these images. Life always involves sensuous material,
and material not of sense. And this which is true of the
conscious life generally, is especially true of religion. Yet
in the representation of the gods men differ greatly in the
prominence which they give to the senses. Uncivilized men,
and indeed many men on the higher grades of culture, see
a sacred energy resident in physical objects. Or if they feel
that the divine powers cannot usually be seen and touched,
yet these divinities are of a nature to be imagined, and upon
rare occasions revealed even to the eye and ear. The endless
variety of sacred stones and trees and places, of images

220

Images of the Divine 2 2 1

wrought in stone or wood or bronze or gold, the divine
animals and men, which are found in the religion of savage
tribes and of peoples long emerged from savagery — the
idols of the Aztecs, the trees and mountains and springs
worshipped in ancient times in Europe, the sacred animals
of the Egyptians, the rulers worshipped even in their lifetime,
in Peru, in Egypt, and at Rome — these illustrate the feeling
that objects directly perceptible are adequate to be or to
represent divinity.

But along with the physical embodiment of the divine,
there usually is an imaginative rendering. The great world
of myth — as of that Benefactor whose return to bless his
people was awaited in old Mexico ; the enchantments of
the Finnish hero, Wainamoinen ; the adventures of the
Wanderer Wodan ; the descent of the goddess Istar to the
world of death, there to seek her lost love Tammuz — such
tales show the readiness in man to picture and recount the
life of the gods as they would the life of men. But better
known to most of us is the religious imagery of Greece.
There men, with art in their very blood, saw the spiritual
world, like the physical world, possessed of surface, colour,
movement. The forms of the gods could be shown in the
marbles of the temple ; their deeds could be told by poet-
minstrels, or appear as dramas on the stage. The Greek
attained the perfection of idolatry ; without scruple, and
glorying in them, he worshipped his gods in images that
have been an unfailing delight to men.

The Hebrew, on the other hand, though long given to
idolatry, seems early to have had misgivings. And yet this
mistrust seems not to have checked the impulse even in the
great leaders and prophets to describe God himself as he
appeared to the inner eye. The Lord has the form of a
man,1 and appears in this form, and talks with Abraham ;2
he sits upon an exalted throne, and his train fills the temple.3
In the accounts in Ezekiel and Daniel — where there appears
perhaps more clearly the influence of the farther East — the
1 Genesis, I, 26. 2 Ibid., XVIII. ^Isaiah. VI, i.

222 Psychology of the Religioiis Life

descriptions become richer and more detailed. Yet even
here the surroundings of divinity are seen, rather than
divinity itself, and the burning centre of the vision is in-
voluntarily left vague and awful : ' Upon the likeness of
the throne of sapphire stone was the likeness as the appear-
ance of a man above upon it. And I saw as the colour of
amber, as the appearance of fire round about within it. As
the appearance of the bow that is in the cloud in the day of
rain, so was the appearance of the brightness round about."1
Of the " Ancient of Days," it is said, " his raiment was
white as snow, and the hair of his head like pure wool ; his
throne was fiery flames, and the wheels thereof burning fire.
A fiery stream issued and came forth from before him :
thousand thousands ministered unto him, and ten thousand
times ten thousand stood before him."2 In contrast with
this reverent portraiture, there was in other portions of the
Hebrew scripture a marked restraint, as if from a sense
that God must not be seen. " And Moses went up unto
God," in the wilderness of Sinai, " and the Lord called unto
him out of the mountain. . . . The Lord said unto Moses,
Lo, I come unto thee in a thick cloud."3 The narrative
suggests that the great leader did not actually see the Lord,
but merely heard his voice. And with most of the prophets,
it is simply the ' word of the Lord ' that comes unto them,
and there is no vision, no form nor outward show, by which
the Lord might be known. The message itself completely
fills the prophet's mind, and he does not care to dwell upon
the appearance of its source. Hebraic as well as Christian
is the feeling of the man described by Paul who " was
caught up into paradise, and heard unspeakable words,
which it was not lawful for a man to utter "4 ; and of the
Monk of Evesham, who beheld on a ' trone of joy ' in Par-
adise " owre blessyd lord and sauyur ihesus criste yn
lykenes of man." But the Monk was not " blessyd of the
syghte of the euerlastyng godhed where al only the holy

1 Ezekiel, I, 26 f., w. omiss. - Daniel, VII, 9 f.

3 Exodus, XIX, 3, 9. 4 2 Corinth., XII, 4.

Images of the Divine 223

angels and the sowlys of ryghtwes men that byn of angels
perfeccion seyn the ynuisibly and inmortalle kynge of all
worldys face to face, the whyche hathe only immortalite,
and dwellyth yn lyghte. that ys inaccessyble. for no man
may cumme to hyt, the whyche no mortalle man seithe
nethyr may see."1

Quite as striking a contrast as that between the Greek
and the Hebrew in regard to the religious imagination is
found in the religious thought in the Vedic Hymns and in
certain of the great scriptures that to us seem not so distant
from them. In the Vedas the gods can be seen rushing
through the sky or hurrying over plain and mountain ;
and if the mind is left confused, it is not for want of imagery,
but for lavish wealth. Agni, the god, is like an elephant's
tooth, he is like an axe. He is thousand-eyed ; he has the
appearance of a snake, he is a devouring bull.

And elsewhere Vishnu reveals his supreme divine form,
which no mere eye can ever see. ' O god ! " cries he to
whom this vision at last is granted, " I see within your body
the gods, as also all the groups of various beings ; and the
lord Brahman seated on his lotus seat, and all the sages
and celestial snakes. I see you, who are of countless forms,
possessed of many arms, stomachs, mouths, and eyes on
all sides. And, O Lord of the universe ! O you of all forms !
I do not see your end or middle or beginning. I see you
bearing a coronet and a mace and a discus — a mass of
glory, brilliant on all sides, difficult to look at, having on all
sides the effulgence of a blazing fire or sun, and indefinable.
. . . Seeing you, O Vishwu ! touching the skies, radiant,
possessed of many hues, with a gaping mouth, and with
large blazing eyes, I am much alarmed in my inmost self,
and feel no courage, no tranquillity." And then comes a
picture of heroes entering like a river the jaws of this de-
vouring god— told with a vividness of gory detail that
requires the nerves of a literary realist for its enjoyment.2

1 Revelation to the Monk of Evcsham, ed. Arber, 1895, pp. 108 f.

2 Bhagavadgita, XI (VIII, 92 ff.).

224 Psychology of the Religious Life

And yet all the while there is evident the double tempta-
tion, both to see the god in all his visible and definite
grandeur, and at the same time to declare his glory as sur-
passing all description, as indefinable. Elsewhere in this
scripture the hesitant temper is in the ascendant, and we
are told of that " ancient seer, the ruler, more minute than
the minutest atom, the supporter of all, who is of an un-
thinkable form, whose brilliance is like that of the sun, and
who is beyond all darkness."1

The neighbouring Persians felt freer to describe what
they hated than what they most adored. The wild Fiend of
the Corpse " flies away to the regions of the north, in the
shape of a raging fly, with knees and tail sticking out,
all stained with stains."2 But I recall no definite picture
in the Avesta, of the divine one, Ahura Mazda himself.
Even the imagination here seems quite in keeping with that
hesitation of theirs in bringing the divinity too close to
physical things. "It is not their custom to set up images
of the gods," we are told by the old historian, " nor to dedi-
cate temples and altars made with hands ; indeed, they
regard it as foolishness in those who do. And this, it seems
to me, is because they do not attribute to the gods, as do the
Greeks, a nature essentially human."3

In the Chinese scripture called the Li K\ the great gods of
the State are vague, silent, impassive guardians of the order
of earth and heaven. Even the nearer ancestral spirits seem
scarcely to emerge distinct from the memorial tablets which
represent them in the family shrine. And at the sacred feasts,
as if to testify to the failure of the imagination, the dead
must be impersonated : some living one — a grandchild, or
(in the case of a ruler) a minister or great officer — was chosen,
to whom for the time were paid the honours due the dead. 4

This contrast which appears in the mental temper of

1 Bhagavadgita, VIII (VIII, 78).

- Zend-Avesta, Vendidad, VIII, 71 (IV, no).

3 Herodotus, I, 131.

4 Li Ki, I, 4, 4 (XXVII, 87), V, 2, 20 (XXVII, 337), V, 2, 25 f. (XXVII,
341), and elsewhere.

Images of the Divine 225

people of different religions is found also within the borders
of one religion. The ancient Egyptians, with all their
readiness to give definite form to the gods, in stone and on
papyrus, as well as in words — as when the god of the savage
face is pictured, from whose mouths cometh forth fire to
devour souls l — yet also describe divinity as with rich sounds
that leave no outline : "I am the child who marcheth along
the road of Yesterday. I am To-day for untold nations and
peoples. I am he who protecteth you for millions of years.
I am he who cannot be known." z And again, the serious
imagery of Protestant Christianity is far less rich and vivid
than that of the Roman Church. The Catholic Church, the
patron of art and the imagination, has found little toleration
for its images either physical or mental among the colder
minds of the north, which from early times seem to have had
distrust of too definite representation of the gods. For even
the ancient Germans, so Tacitus relates, believed that
' because of the greatness of heavenly beings, the gods are
not to be confined within walls nor to be likened in appear-
ance to the face of man. They consecrate woods and groves ;
and by the name of divinities, they call upon that mys-
terious something which they behold only by the eye of
reverence." 3 And to illustrate the same difference of
temperament among writers of the New Testament, how
opposed are the ways in which Paul and the author of the
Book of Revelation express their religious thought. Both are
visionists, both can make an impression on the very eye.
But the one rushes through pictures to argument, eager that
men should by reason be persuaded of the triumph of the
cross. The other, equally absorbed in the final victory of
the faith, sees it as a universal drama, with stately dialogue
and scenes, and takes the mind captive as by a pageant.

If one were now to pass from the clear fact of such a
contrast toward the causes of the contrast, he would soon

1 Book of the Dead, CLXIII, 4.

1 Ibid.,,tr. Budge, XLII, 18 £f., w. omiss. The translator queries the
first Yarn,' and brackets the second.
3 Germania, IX.

226 Psychology of the Religious Life

reach the obscurity in which all the deeper facts of con-
sciousness are veiled. But this much at least is clear, that
the mind, if left to its young and robust self, lives in a world
that can be seen and heard and felt, and though never quite
content with what the senses directly give, yet builds its
larger habitation after the pattern of what is seen. The
religious use of sense and of sense-like imagery is but an
instance of proper spiritual husbandry ; religion takes those
powers that are at hand, and employs them in its larger
plan.

This freedom of the imagination, so characteristic of
childhood and of youth, may continue into later years.
But with maturity the fabric of the imagination often
ceases to interest, and falls into decay. There is no single
cause for this decline in the plastic definiteness of the unseen.
But in a large measure it is part of the price we pay for other
powers. In our dreams, fancy awakes as intellect and
conscience slumber, and sleeps as these awaken ; so in the
life at large, the imagination loses its freedom as the other
great powers of mind advance. At long intervals the earth
is visited by some genius, like Milton, whose free imagina-
tion lives on by the side of some great practical interest ;
or a people appears, like the Greeks, who are artists and
intellectualists in one. But the custom of nature with
common mortals is to withhold one thing as she gives
another.

And so religion as it grows to be a zeal for good works to
one's fellow-men, or for emotional submission and awe
before the gods, or for an intellectual grasp of the divine
and a rational justification of God's ways to men — as it
develops thus, there appears a reticence, a hemming-in,
of the pictorial representation of the central objects of
worship. In some cases this check upon imagination is from
an unconscious draining of energy by other things. The
vigour of the Chinese ran to the practical fulfilment of family
and social obligations, to ritual and beneficent works.
The Jewish prophets were filled with the sublimity of the

Images of the Divine 227

Divine, and with the instant need of compelling the people
to heed Jehovah's commands. Even Mohammed, visionary
as he was, and of a people whose tales of fancy have been
the delight of many lands, follows in the Koran the spirit
of the Hebrew prophets. Either his imagination, when it
came to the central features of the Divine, was awe-struck
and powerless, or else the insistence of the practical import
of the word crowded all else from his communication. The
message itself and all the purpose and creative power of God
is given in deepest poetry. " He it is who made the night
for a garment ; and sleep for repose, and made the day for
men to rise up again. And He it is who sent the winds with
glad tidings before His mercy."1 Yet no mortal sees him,
nor is it given even to the Prophet to hear directly from the
Lord the words of the Koran. God conceals himself,2 and
inspires Mohammed by his angel. But because nothing
could exceed the tropic richness in which, in all other
respects, the revelation is told by the Hebrew seer and by the
Arab, we cannot say that the effect of religion is inevitably
to hinder the creative imagination. For in many ways
religion is one of its most powerful stimulants, one of the
great influences to develop art. What we love we seek to
beautify. But with certain peoples, as with a type of in-
dividuals, reverence hinders the free representation of what
is worshipped. A definite portrayal seems almost too
familiar, almost too close an approach, and is repugnant to
the sense of mystery and awe.

But among many of our Western peoples, and especially
with the great leaders of religious thought in Europe, there
has been still another force to curb the religious fancy — the
conviction that sensuous imagery is unable to portray the
spirit. The core of character, even of human character,
is felt more and more to lie in its judgments, preferences,
decisions, purposes, which constantly are experienced, but
never can be seen or heard or handled ; and therefore cannot

1 Koran, XXV (IX, 87).

2 Ibid., XLII (IX, 210), and elsewhere.

228 Psychology of the Religious Life

be imagined, since imagination merely retains and recombines
what sense has furnished. And when men, in their effort
to glorify the gods, begin to dwell upon these inner features
of the divine character, the elaborate imagery of the older
days is felt to be of no avail. A new realm has been opened
to the mind, a realm to be entered not by outer perception,
but by inner experience. The contact with the Highest is
now made by appreciating what is highest in our own inner
life of effort, of sympathy, and of thought. Of these inner
realities, the outward form and movement of things with
all their changing hues are no revelation ; and he who seeks
to behold the glory of the Lord must turn from them.
" I have gone astray like a Sheep that was lost," says St.
Augustine, " seeking thee with great anxiety without, when
yet thou art within, and dwellest in my Soul, if it desire
thy presence. I wandered about the Villages and Streets
of the City of this world, enquiring for thee everywhere,
and found thee not ; because I expected to meet that
abroad, which all the while I had at home. I sent my
messengers into all quarters, and charged my bodily senses
to make strict search, and bring back a true report, but all
to no purpose. . . . My eyes declare, if God have no colour,
he came not in at those doors ; My Ears, if he made no noise,
he did not pass this way ; My Nose, if he did not affect the
smell, he entered not by me : My Palate, if he have no taste,
he could not enter here : my Touch, if he be not a bodily
substance, I can give no account of him. These qualities,
then, do not belong to thee, my God, because I am not
conscious of any such impressions upon thy approach.
For thou hast not the form of a Body, nor the whiteness of
Light, nor the sparkling of Precious Stones, nor the Harmony
of Musick, nor the fragrancy of Flowers, or Ointments, or
Spices, nor the delicious taste of Honey, nor the charms of
those things that are pleasant to the Touch, nor any other
qualities by which our Senses are entertained." And thus,
after consulting the creatures abroad, " I came home at
last, descended into myself." Until, finally, there comes the

Images of the Divine 229

cry : " Thanks to that light, which discovered itself to Me,
and Me to my self. For in finding and in knowing my self,
I find and know Thee."1

But long before there is any such conscious rejection of
imagery as a truthful means of spiritual representation,
and before the mind intentionally employs only the materials
of its invisible experience, there is a period when religious
images exist side by side with thoughts that are at no great
peace with their companions. The trials of this double
mode of presentation must now be set forth in some detail.

1 Meditations of St. Augustine, made English by Geo. Stanhope, 1704,
pp. 224-7.

CHAPTER XVII

THE OPPOSITION OF PICTURE AND THOUGHT

EVEN where religious images are richly present, the
thought of the worshipper soon shows a certain
independence of them. The natural object which is the
embodiment of the god or spirit — the sun, the vault of the
sky, the fire, the storm — are at first worshipped in the form
in which they actually appear to man ; though even at
this early stage they are endowed with the feelings and
purposes of conscious life, which the eye alone cannot
directly observe. Or if the god be the soul of some departed
ancestor, he will at first be thought in the form and char-
acter which he showed in actual life. But even the memory,
and still more the imagination, is a strange transformer.
The appearance and the behaviour of the gods of natural
objects, while still keeping close to the physical action of the
things with which the gods are associated, insensibly exceed
the course of these natural objects. Something of what is
meant may be illustrated from the Rig- Veda. The Maruts,
the storm-gods of the Vedic worship, are in many respects
represented in perfect harmony with the physical action of
storms. They are glorious youths, rushing through the
heavens on golden chariots, shaking the sky and mountains,
while the forests bend in fear before them. They are of great
bounty — an attribute doubtless suggested by the blessing of
rain in a country sadly experienced in drought. The thought,
too. that these Maruts are " the singers of the sky " is still
in keeping with the wild voices of the storm. Even when
they are given the character of immortality, this might be

The Opposition of Picture and Thought 231

defended ; for though storms are intermittent, and we could,
for all the outer facts, imagine each tempest to be a new
birth and doomed to perish when the storm subsides, yet
storms are seen to pass away vigorous in the distance, and
rarely die before our eyes, as the summer, for example,
seems to die. But when to the Maruts is ascribed wisdom
and righteousness, the character of the natural object has
clearly ceased to control the thought.1 Likewise Agni,
the god of fire, is at first described as though fire itself were
present, gnawing, crunching, devastating. He rages through
the earth, and forests fall before him. He is the purifier, he
drives away disease. z So far we remain close to the physical
traits of fire. But when Agni is declared to be " a sage
possessed of knowledge," 3 " famous by the power of his
mind/' 4 " highly wise," 5 and " undeceivable," 6 then,
however faithfully the mind may preserve the radiant
image, thought has brought in attributes that glowing heat
itself never shows. We know what we mean by wisdom
and infallibility, but they are not to be imaged to the senses,
much less are they observed to abide in flame. The idealizing
activity of thought has here outstripped the sensuous
imagination.

This insufficiency of the image to meet the needs of
thought appears at times even as a direct contradiction
between the two. Abstract qualities are attributed to the
gods, with which the more concrete portrayal of them in
the dramatic story does not accord. In the Kalevala, the
epic of the Finns, the god Ukko is declared to be omniscient.1
Yet when the sorceress Louhi stole the sun and moon from
heaven and hid them in a cavern, Ukko is unable to under-
stand the darkness. After long considering the strange
disaster, he begins to seek the sun and moon, shooting in
his search the livid lightning.8 His omniscience is thus an
abstract attribute which is contradicted by the form in which

1 Vedic Hymns, V, .57 (XXXII, ^40 f.). - Ibid., I, 12 (XLVI, 6).

3 Ibid., I, 65, 9 (XLVI, 54). < Ibid., 71, 10 (XLVI, 75).

5 Ibid., 12 (XLVI, 6). 6 Ibid., 31, 10 (XLVI, 23).

' Rune IX. 8 Rune XLVII.

232 Psychology of the Religioiis Life

he appears to the imagination. And in the Rig- Veda the
gods are declared in the abstract to dwell in unbroken peace ;a
yet in the concrete pictures of the narrative, instances are
given of their anger and mutual clash.

But the most frequent and astonishing instances of the
kind are found in the Iliad and Odyssey, and are so in-
structive that one may be pardoned for dwelling awhile
upon them. They doubtless are part of the abundant
evidence that these poems are composite, and are largely
due to the different levels of culture and tradition from
which the minstrels drew. Such an outcome of modern
scholarship may be borne in mind as though it were re-
affirmed in every paragraph that follows. And yet one may
well enquire at the end whether these particular contra-
dictions may not for the psychologist be significant of much
beside.

The first of these incongruities is in regard to the moral
office of the gods. The Homeric divinities seem, at a careless
glance, to be without concern for morals, either in them-
selves or men. Life on Olympus has the tone of a small
court circle where wealth abounds and pleasure is the chief
aim. Trickery and brawling and adultery were common in
this divine society. Men do not seem to have expected the
gods to be patterns of human conduct. The gods were
born to happiness ; and happiness, for the Greek, was not
closely bound with moral severity. The gods, in turn, made
light demands of men. Usually it is not men's conduct
toward one another that is of prime moment to heaven,
but only the performance of the religious ritual. No search
was made into the heart of him who brought sacrifices to
the altar. Religion in this way seems to have been entirely
separate from morality.

But immoral as the Olympian society appears, this
indifference to the quality of conduct is not a pervasive
trait. There is clear evidence that the gods were more than
mere seekers of pleasure. Zeus was especially interested in

1 IV, 13, 3 (XLVI, 356).

The Opposition of Picture and Thought 233

the welfare of kings, of strangers, and of beggars. " Is
he kind to strangers and reverent toward the gods ? " a
question asked with regard to men, already shows a slight
bond between religion and morality. But further than
this limited interest on the part of heaven, there is occasional
recognition that the gods are the universal guardians of
moral, and not simply ritual, action. When the much-
buffeted Odysseus at last comes to his home, only to find
it infested with the suitors of Penelope, the hero disguised
as a beggar is insulted and struck by one of the riotous crew.
The others indignantly upbraid their comrade : " A doomed
man you, if he should be a god come down from heaven.
And gods in guise of strangers from afar in every form do
roam our cities, marking the sin and righteousness of men." x
Here is a saying distinctly inconsistent with the loose
conduct of the Olympian court. And again, in a passage
of deep religious earnestness, when the old warrior Phoenix
urges Achilles to soften his hard purpose, setting forth the
beauty of repentance after sin, " Nay," he says, " even the
very gods can bend, and theirs withal is loftier majesty
and honour and might. Their hearts by incense and
reverent vows and drink-offering and burnt-offering men
turn with prayer, so oft as any transgresseth and doeth sin.
Moreover, Prayers of penitence are daughters of great Zeus,
halting and wrinkled and of eyes askance, that have their
task withal to go in the steps of Sin. For Sin is strong and
fleet of foot, wherefore she far outrunneth all prayers, and
goeth before them over all the earth making men fall, and
Prayers follow behind to heal the harm." 2

In these passages there is a sense of moral concern. The
gods spy into the secular life of men to see whether therein
is uprightness or sin. They send a spirit of repentance by
which atonement is made for the wrong already done.
Here is at least the beginning of the insight which takes
so long to become clear, that the gods desire more than

1 Odyssey, XVII, 484 ff., tr. Palmer.

2 Iliad. IX, 497 if., tr. Lang, Leaf, and Myers.

234 Psychology of the Religious Life

sacrifice, they require righteousness. Religion and morality
are coming into union, in striking contrast with the pre-
vailing dramatic action of the poems, where the gods give
little heed to the moral conduct of men, but are chiefly
interested in the worldly success of those who have obtained
their goodwill.

The other contrasts of which I would speak show even
more clearly a contradiction between the abstract descrip-
tion of the nature of the gods and their nature as dra-
matically presented. To the divinities are ascribed qualities
which, according to the concrete portrayal, they do not
possess. It would hardly have been surprising if an in-
consistency had been found only on the purely ethical plane ;
if, for instance, the gods had been called just and righteous,
and had then been pictured as doing deeds of injustice,
according to our standards. This would have meant,
simply, that what appeared to us unjust did not seem so to
these earlier minds. If, to be more explicit, opinion had
not become set in condemnation of lying, it would not
surprise us to hear the gods called ' just,' yet actually given
to deceit. But, strangely enough, it is in the moral realm
that contradictions are least in evidence. They are fre-
quent in fields where this explanation which so readily
occurs is scarcely pertinent.

The first of these further inconsistencies has to do with
the happiness of the gods. Achilles, speaking to aged Priam,
who has come to beg the body of his slain son, Hector,
pityingly says : " This is the lot the gods have spun for
miserable men, that they should live in pain, yet themselves
are sorrowless." * And, similarly, there is frequent men-
tion of the gods as " living at ease " or " free from care," 2
or as the ' happy,' the ' blest,' the ' blissful ' gods.3

And yet when we come to examine their lives as pictured
in detail, we find them hardly free from care, or ever-blissful.
Many of the gods are exiles, imprisoned deep in gloomy

1 Iliad, XXIV, 525 f. 2 Ibid., VI, 138, and elsewhere.

3 Ibid., 141, and elsewhere.

The Opposition of Picture and Thought 235

Tartaros, where there is " no joy in the beams of Hyperion
the Sun-god." 1 And even the life of the Olympians had its
times of ruffled calm. Ares is wounded, and bellows " loud
as nine thousand warriors or ten thousand cry in battle as
they join in strife and fray." 2 Afterwards, when he com-
plains to Zeus, " the Cloud-gatherer looked sternly at him
and said, ' Nay, thou renegade, sit not by me and whine '
— hard words for a blissful god to bear ! And when Aphro-
dite, also wounded by a mortal, went for comfort to her
mother Dione, the consolation offered her is that such
sorrows have often come to gods. ' Be of good heart, my
child," she says, " and endure for all thy pain ; for many
of us that inhabit the mansions of Olympus have suffered
through men, in bringing grievous woes one upon another."
And then is told an incident that must have come down
from some dark antiquity of myth. " So suffered Ares,"
Dione says, " when Otos and stalwart Ephialtes, sons of
Alceus, bound him in a strong prison-house ; yea, in a vessel
of bronze lay he bound thirteen months." 4 And then she
narrated how Hera had been wounded in the breast, and
endured pain unassuageable ; and how Hades had been
pierced with an arrow and suffered anguish and grief at
heart. And even the Olympian Zeus himself is constantly
foiled and angered by the lesser gods, and particularly by
her who is " his dear wife." The gods thus had the cares and
pain of men, and yet they are called the gods that live in
bliss, the happy gods.

The next conflict between epithet and dramatic portrait
is in regard to the divine knowledge. The gods are expressly
said to know all things. When Menelaus, becalmed at the
Isle of Pharos, questions the nymph Eidothea, daughter
of mighty Proteus, he says : " Tell me — for gods know all —
which of the immortals chains me here and bars my pro-
gress " ; 5 and later, when he finally overcomes Proteus,
he again uses the same expression, " for gods know all." 6

1 Iliad, VIII, 479 ff. 2 Ibid., V, 859 ff. 3 Ibid., 888 ff.

4 Ibid., 381 ff. 5 Odyssey, IV, 379. 6 Ibid., 468.

236 Psychology of the Religious Life

Glaukos utters a similar thought, praying to Apollo :
" Hear, O Prince that art somewhere in the rich land of
Lykia, or in Troia, for thou canst listen everywhere to the
man that is in need." x And when the Muses are invoked,
it is recalled to them that they " are goddesses, and are
at hand, and know all things." 2

H But when we turn to the pictured presentation, we find
the gods having, it is true, a knowledge more than man's,
yet far from perfect. After Askalaphos had been slain,
it is distinctly said that Ares, his father, was not yet aware
that his son had fallen in strong battle.3 Poseidon does not
learn until late that Odysseus had departed on his raft
from Calypso's isle ; he discovers it by chance as he returns
from Ethiopia.4 The bright-eyed Athene had no direct
knowledge of where Pandaros was, whom she desired to
meet, but must search for him " if haply she might find
him." 5 And like examples could be given of the ignorance
even of Zeus himself. Plots are hatched that he knows
not of, and in various ways it is evident that he, as well as
the other immortals, had but a limited knowledge of what
occurred. Yet, in the abstract, they are the gods that know
all things.

The final contradiction that I would mention is in regard
to the eternity of the gods. They are described as the
immortal gods, the gods that ' exist for ever,' the gods ' that
never die and never had beginning.' 6 But in contrast with
this, the actual narrative, instead of indicating that the
gods are existent always, sets forth their birth and parentage,
quite in the human way. Hera, when wishing from Aphro-
dite a charm to take captive the heart of Zeus, deceitfully
tells her that she is going " to visit the limits of the bountiful
Earth, and Okeanos, father of the gods, and mother Tethys,
who reared me well and nourished me in their halls, having
taken me from Rhea, when far-seeing Zeus imprisoned

1 Iliad, XVI, 514 ff. a Ibid., II, 484 f.

3 Ibid., XIII, 521 f. 4 Odyssey, V, 282 ff. 6 Iliad, IV, 88.
6 Ibid., VI, 527 ; cf. II, 400, VI, 53, etc. ; Odyssey, II, 432.

The Opposition of Picture and Thought 237

Kronos beneath the earth and the unvintaged sea." x
Zeus and Poseidon and Hades are sons of Kronos and Rhea ;
and from Zeus spring Aphrodite, Apollo, Athene, and others.
Thus the present race of the gods came into existence in the
past, through father and mother ; yet they are the gods that
are both immortal and from everlasting.2

These are the curious inconsistencies in the religious view
of the Homeric epics, resembling the contradictions that
appear in their account of purely secular affairs 3 — religious
inconsistencies that are not without parallel in other early
poetry, and, indeed, as I shall attempt to point out later,
are present in idealization generally, whether in the ancient
or in the modern world. We might now consider with care
why such contradictions appear in these early literary and
religious monuments.

With regard to some of these inconsistencies in the
Homeric view, it has been asserted that they are there
because the mind swings between two opposing moods —
a deeply serious and religious mood in which the profound
attributes, of eternity, omniscience, and peace, are assigned
the gods ; and an irresponsible, myth-producing state of
mind in which an irrational, anthropomorphic element
comes to the front, and men are willing to gossip and joke
even about those things they value most.

Now the mind unquestionably does pass between such
poles of feeling, and Homer is grave and gay in turn. But

1 Odyssey, XIV, 200 ff.

* It is not likely that such epithets were given with the thought merely
that the gods as a class, rather than as individuals, lived for ever, without
beginning or end. There would then have been no especial appropriateness
in speaking of the gods, more than of men, as the immortals ; for men,
too, as a class, live on. Moreover, since the attribute of deathlessness
seems evidently to have been thought of as applying to the individual
god, it seems improbable that the thought of eternal existence in the past,
which in Homer is so closely joined with the thought of divine immor-
tality, should have been used in a wholly different way ; that is, it seems
strained to suppose him using the epithets aieiyevtrynv and aitv ^6vres
with thought only of the divine group, while the epithet a06.va.Toi. imply-
ing endless future existence, was used with thought of the divine in-
dividuals.

3 See Gilbert Murray : Rise of the Greek Epic, 1907, pp. 212 fi.

238 Psychology of the Religious Life

it is impossible to account thus for the peculiar form of his
religious contradictions. For by this theory the fact is
unexplained that the degrading element is confined to
pictures and stories, while the epithets are uniformly and
consistently noble. Homer gives utterance to numberless
undignified anecdotes about the gods, but never to be-
smirching epithets. He never calls them the lustful gods,
the lying gods, the gods that are stupid and ignorant. If it
were a mere matter of mood, there is no reason why such
epithets should not have been used as freely as the stories
which convey the same meaning. Mere irresponsible
humour can bring forth disgraceful abstract statements as
well as disgraceful tales.

A far more convincing explanation, I believe, is the
thought already referred to, that these inconsistencies
arise because the materials were drawn from various sources,
and were connected with different times and stages of criti-
cism and culture. And in conjoining the materials, there
often was, in spite of evident editing and expurgation, a
failure to do this work in all completeness. 1

And yet, while pieces patched together are apt to be
discordant, there were doubtless special causes here at
work, to make peculiarly difficult the attainment of full
harmony.

If one may mention first an influence that was perhaps
the weakest, these inconsistencies may have been dimly
seen in some cases, and yet winked at. The dramatic move-
ment of the works would demand something short of perfect
blessedness and omniscience. A consistent carrying out of
such ideals would have prevented any real action, so far as
heaven is concerned ; and the literary interest would have
been confined to earth. Even the Puritan Milton would
have found it hard to make heaven dramatically interesting
had he not seized it at a moment when it was not heaven,
but a scene of insurrection. And even with this advantage,
hell stands out in better outline, with better shading and

1 Cf. Murray : Rise of the Greek Epic, 1907, pp. 116-135.

The Opposition of Picture and Thought 239

body. How much more, then, would the un- Puritan Greeks,
with their zest for colour and for action, have found that
an attempt to construct heaven in accordance with their
abstract epithets of bliss and perfect knowledge would
result in something motionless and intolerable.

But while it is conceivable that Homer may have had
such motives, they hardly were sufficient to explain some
of the most flagrant discords. The dramatic action seems
hardly to require, for instance, that Zeus should pause
in the love scene with his wife and recount at length his
more prominent amours. There would have been no lack
of movement if, too, the story had been omitted of the old-
time family scene, where Zeus, in a fury, suspends his queen
from heaven, with anvils hanging from her feet. Such
stories have no direct connection with the actual movement
of the epic, but doubtless are remnants of the lore of some
earlier and less sensitive age. They would, however, have
been expurged had they not found some silent support
within the mind itself. For each single mind is found
upon acquaintance to harbour the strangest inconsistencies.
The larger edifice of thought which each constructs is as
composite as the Iliad or Odyssey seems to most critics to be.
For each must join as best he can to the traditions from an
earlier time those fresh insights from his own and his
fellows' advancing life. The spirit of reverence, without
which we cannot well live, makes us cling to ideas that have
served our fathers, even after our own life no longer needs
them. It requires a delicate exercise of judgment and of
sentiment to do justice to the past — we owe so much to it —
and yet not let it deal with us unjustly. In Homer, as in
the Vedas and the Kalevala, some of the lower conceptions of
the gods were doubtless products of an olden time, which
piety would not surrender. The higher expressions came
from later insight that nevertheless did not entirely annul
the earlier ideas.

But that all the considerations yet offered are insufficient
is shown, I think, in the fact that they (Jo not explain the

240 Psychology of the Religiotis Life

strange orderliness in the contradictions. Within a single
composition there is no marked inconsistency between
divine epithets ; the gods are not, by turns, called ignorant
and knowing or at one moment said to be eternal and at
another, sure to pass away. The epithets, or abstract state-
ments, are harmonious ; and the stories, too, are, by them-
selves, usually consistent. But between the two modes of
presenting the divine life — between story and epithet —
there is an irrepressible conflict.

These inconsistencies between imagery and conception
become more intelligible and significant when we see that
they have their parallels in modern religion, and indeed
wherever there is an attempt to bring into union thought
and life. For in the first place it is probably easier for
abstract thought to change and to reach new levels, than
for a change to take place in the definite pictures of the
imagination. Just as rites are much more stable than the
interpretation, or than the doctrine which these rites
suggest, and men persist in ancient usages that have either
changed their meaning or become quite meaningless — so
it seems probable that society can change its ideas, its
abstract conceptions, its judgments, much more readily
than it can change its concrete expression of these. If this
be true, the early purification and ennobling of the ab-
stract statement of religion are due to the fact that thought
outruns the imagination, and mark the advance of social
feeling to which imagery comes only late and halting.
Thought thus better represents the new, while imagery
still dwells in the past ; and a conflict between the two is
hard to avoid.

Moreover, we find a universal difficulty in deciding with
any accuracy just how our abstract conceptions may best
be realized either in practical conduct or even in the free
material of imagination. Conduct always requires some-
thing concrete and definite ; but the concrete and definite
has innumerable aspects, and we are absolutely unable to
see the bearing of all these different sides upon the idea

The Opposition of Picture and Thought 241

which we wish to express. We choose a line of action that
in some striking feature harmonizes with our thought ; we
overlook the many qualities in the situation that are dis-
cordant with it ; and an ' irrational element ' thus slips in.
This irrational element in what is sensuous and concrete may
vary in its degrees of flagrance, but it is always there. Its
universal presence led Plato to declare that this world never
clearly images the heavenly ideas ; they become obscured and
distorted when they descend to the realm of matter.

If one may take a striking and extreme illustration, we
often have in lynching an attempt in good faith to apply
the abstract idea of justice to a definite situation. In some
respects the action clearly harmonizes with that idea, but
in its frenzy the mob catches no glimpse of the many sides
of its conduct that are a wide departure and which really
strengthen the hold of crime and injustice upon men. Or,
to pass to another region, probably few members of the
Roman Church would hesitate to proclaim themselves
monotheists, and yet the honours to the saints and es-
pecially to the Virgin are undoubtedly something of a com-
promise with a primitive polytheistic bent. The religious
view in its details here does not quite accord with what we
might call the conceptional side of the worship. In a similar
and still more impressive way, the Church universally speaks
of God as the Heavenly Father, the God of love, slow to
anger and plenteous in mercy. These are our epithets
corresponding to the Homeric ' joyous/ ' omniscient,'
' eternal.' But when Christians wished to represent in con-
crete form the historic life of God, a widely adopted account
of the motives which led to the Redemption revealed God
as having been, ever since the transgression in the Garden,
in a state of anger rather than of love, turning away from
men and not to be appeased until some substitute should
be found on whom the wrath might fall, innocent though
that substitute might be. No story in Homer could more
flatly contradict the Church's higher abstract conception
of what a divine character truly is. And yet we cannot
R

242 Psychology of the Religious Life

believe that the irrational element here was either originated
or listened to in any playful anecdotal mood. We know
too well how deeply serious, indeed, so far as mood is con-
cerned, how truly religious men were, in the presence of
such portrayal. Even therein they found something that
ministered to their sense of the greatness and of the near-
ness of the Divinity, namely his eternal justice ; they
felt his infinite interest in the righteousness of men, since
even a single transgression could produce in him such last-
ing wrath. His very anger thus testified to the bond between
him and men ; indifference would have been a sign that the
gulf was indeed impassable. Later we are impressed by the
incongruity between such a representation and our sense
of divine perfection, and then it seems wellnigh impossible
that men could ever have received the doctrine in a religious
spirit. This is because we have lost sight of its many sides
that are harmonious with even the highest ideal, and which
give it value to one who is at once reverent and uncritical.

We must recognize, then, that religion has at least two
distinct media in which to represent the character of the
divine. The ideal may be definitely, though abstractly,
represented in thought, or it may be expressed in the form
of the imagination. And it is clear that in the same group
of minds, and even in the single mind, the two modes of ex-
pression may stand in unconscious conflict. It is exceedingly
difficult — at any given stage of culture we may truly say
it is impossible — to see all that our highest ideals imply in
terms of concrete conduct. Or to look in the opposite
direction, a living situation such as the imagination strives
to construct has innumerable aspects, and we never see
them all nor detect at any moment their endlessly varied
relations to the Ideal. And, therefore, we are ever clinging
to images, as we are always sanctioning modes of conduct,
which are in part harmonious with our highest insight, but
which, in more respects than we ever at the instant see, are
discordant, and defame the truth which we would have
them illustrate.

CHAPTER XVIII

THE ESCAPE FROM IMAGERY

THE pictures we make of the divine life are unequal
to our purpose, if this be high ; they cannot express
the fullness of the religious ideal.

A certain relief from this embarrassment is obtained in
several ways : by sensuous symbols ; by expressing the
ideal in materials drawn, not from the outer senses, but
from our inner experience ; and by presenting the truth
in the form of relations grasped by the intellect and by
desire. We may consider by itself each of these modes of
relief.

Even when the sensuous forms are confessed to be in-
sufficient, the religious mind still feels their help. In cer-
tain forms of mysticism we find an exuberance of images,
but these are not intended to be taken literally, as perhaps
is sometimes the case with myths. Jacob Boehme — after
pointing out that the Father's power and wisdom are
visible in the heavens, and yet that his power is not like
that of the physical sun which does both good and ill —
continues his account of God as the Son by saying : ' Now
would one see God the Son, again must he look to natural
things, otherwise I cannot write of Him. The spirit, indeed,
beholds Him, but no one can speak or write it, for the Divine
Being consists of a power which cannot be told by writing or
speech. Therefore must we use images, would we speak of
God ; for our lives in this world are of patchwork, and we
are of patchwork created." And the image that he finally

243

244 Psychology of the Religious Life

chooses is this, that the Son is not beside the Father, like
a second person, but is the Father's Heart .x
\* Swedenborg, too, describes heaven in definite spatial
terms — as definite as those used in the Book of Revelation.
" The quarters in the heavens which constitute the celestial
kingdom of the Lord, differ from the quarters in the heavens
which constitute His spiritual kingdom, because the Lord
appears to the angels who are in His celestial kingdom as a
sun, but to the angels who are in His spiritual kingdom
as a moon ; and the east is where the Lord appears." z
But all this, we are warned, is a matter of spiritual
space, and in the spiritual world what appear as
differences of locality are, after all, but an external re-
flection of differences in the quality and inner character of
spirits : " spaces in heaven are nothing else than external
states corresponding to internal."3

The image is thus no sooner given than it is declared to
be not a literal picture, but a symbol. Indeed, with Sweden-
borg the whole system of the physical world, as well as
the events recounted in Scripture, become symbols of
spiritual truth. There is a persistent parallel, a ' corre-
spondence,' between the sensuous and the heavenly, while,
on the other hand, the purely abstract statement of religious
truth, without the aid of symbol, is less highly prized. The
Epistles of the New Testament are regarded by many who
follow this belief as being inferior canonically to the narra-
tives of Jewish history which permit of allegorical inter-
pretation. Doctrine is important, but (the feeling seems
to be) it had best be introduced pictorially.

This constant need of imagery, and yet of treating the
images as metaphors, shows that the mystic here has a
clear perception that the intended doctrine is different
from the sensuous form in which it appears. If we were to
describe the process more fully, we might be tempted to say
that the guiding force was intellect, but dependent all the

1 Morgenriite im Aufgang, ch. Ill, 8-15 ; ed. 1780, pp. 15 ff.

2 Swedenborg: Heaven and the World of Spirits, and Hell, § 146;
cf. § 148. 3 Ibidt> § I93.

The Escape from Imagery 245

while on sense. Yet this intellectual guidance is so different
in many ways from that usually recognized by the rationalist
or theologian, that we may in the end refrain from calling it
intellectual. For the insight of the mystic often goes
by impulse and by flashes ; there is little of cautious
advance, little retracing of one's steps. The very prominence
of mental pictures, moreover, and often of intense feeling,
marks it off from the colourless and unimpassioned work of
intellect. The symbolist thus lives in a richer world and
enjoys the varied advantages of image, emotion, and thought.
The conflict which I have earlier dwelt upon, between
imagery and thought, is, in his case, ended in no partisan
way by rejecting one and retaining the other, but by re-
taining both, and requiring each to serve according to its
genius. Whether the truth is set forth in parable or in
allegory or as a mystic correspondence between nature
and the spirit, the intellect is always present with the picture,
and by its interpretation provides the hidden meaning of
the symbol.

But there is a form of religious representation which
makes no essential use of imagery. The mind is never free
from what is sensuous, nor can it by any possibility rid itself
of the imagination. But there is a mode of representing
truth, in which images are unbidden guests. In spite of
the importance which it has been customary to attribute
to the pictorial form of our ideas, we can now say with
reasonable assurance that there are certain states of mind
where imagery contributes but little to the outcome — indeed,
seems not to bring us nearer the end at all. As a man in
sunlight cannot escape his shadow, yet the shadow does
not help him walk ; so, with some persons, the movements
of the understanding are neither caused nor aided by the
shadowy sensuous forms which accompany these higher
acts.

And now it is necessary to make clearer the difference
between the representation of truth by imagination and by
a process that is not of imagination in the least.

246 Psychology of the Religious Life

In his account of heaven, Swedenborg declares that the
sun in heaven is the Lord, and from this sun proceed both
light and heat — the divine intelligence being the light of
heaven, while its heat is the divine love.1 An outward and
sensuous experience of the sun and of its light and warmth
here stands for the spiritual characteristics of intellect and
affection. Now these spiritual characteristics are unimagin-
able ; they have neither colour nor sound nor tactile
quality nor any other feature (in themselves, as distinct
from their outworks and accompaniment) which the senses
can report. And so by the imagination they can never be
adequately represented. Yet we are at no loss to know their
qualities, for we have had experience of thinking and affec-
tion, and can recall these experiences as truly as we can
represent to ourselves our outward impressions of light and
warmth.

We thus possess a kind of imageless imagination which
we employ in spiritual portraiture, using freely and with
absolute definiteness and security the recollection of our
inner moods, our aversion and affection, our acts of judging,
of intention, of condemnation and approval. This store of
invisible experiences which are not to be confused with our
merely organic sensations, and yet are as real to us as these
or as the outer things we see and taste and touch, is drawn
upon for religious use from very early times. The spirits
and gods of savages are not composed merely of those
sensible qualities which men or animals, trees or stones
display. There is a vague psychic endowment given to all
these objects of respect. As soon as there is religion and not
mere magic, so soon does man seek to influence the inner
life — the will, the feeling — of his divinity, in order to avert
anger or gain favour. If an unfamiliar word might be
used to mark this infusion of psychic qualities into the
physical form, we might say that empsychosis goes hand-
in-hand with imagery.2 And with the higher stages of

1 op.cit., §§131-133-

- The word 'personification' that may seem to make 'empsychosis'
uncalled for, implies that the psychic life ascribed is organized into a

The Escape from Imagery 247

religion this instillation of the psychic is consciously relied
upon as the chief means of representing spirit. What
Ahura Mazda wills and condemns, what his inner states
and acts may be, is of more significance to Zoroaster than
the outward appearance of the god. And the same is true
of the Buddhist, of the Jew, the Mohammedan, and the
Christian. God is love, he is merciful, he is long-suffering,
he is forgiving — these are attributes of divinity which do
not absolutely require an outward image, however much we
may so shadow them forth. They are qualities drawn from
experience of ourselves and our fellow-men. But in deriving
such attributes in part from our fellow-men, it must not
be supposed that we can draw them by our outward senses
alone. I can see the frown of my companion, but not his
displeasure ; the smile, but not his goodwill.

Thus my construction of the inner life of other men, as
well as of the inner life of supernatural beings, is due to a
power parallel to the imagination, but different from it. It
is like imagination, in that it freely raises before the mind
objects that we have never actually experienced, although
constructed of materials drawn from our experience. It is
different from imagination in the technical meaning of the
word, since the materials used for its products are drawn
not from the senses, but from our invisible life of sentiment
and purpose.

And besides this difference in the materials used for the
two kinds of construction — the materials of imagination
being external impressions of light and shadow, colour and
tone, warmth and chill and the rest of their wide kind ;
while in empsychosis inner experiences are used, judging,
longing, intending, and the like — besides this contrast of
the ' stuff ' employed, there is a contrast in the manner
of union, in the relations in which the materials stand.
The objects represented in imagination have spatial char-
high, a personal, form. There is need of some expression more general
than this, to include also the attribution of psychic qualities that are
still left vague and almost formless. For this reason I have reluctantly
used the term ' empsychosis.'

248 Psychology of the Religious Life

acter (along with temporal) — extension, shape, and mutual
position of parts. The objects represented by empsychosis
only are without spatial marks ; the parts here are, how-
ever, not disconnected, not formless, but are held together
by many bonds, the chief and most pervasive of which is
time. This contrast in the two methods of portrayal — a
contrast both of materials and of form — does not, however,
prevent the employment of both together. A religious
object, like Zeus or Jehovah, may at once bring a definite
spatial picture before the mind's eye, and also have a rich
psychic life.

But beyond physical forms and forms of the imagination,
and beyond the concrete descriptions of the spirit drawn
from our inner life, there is another mode of representing
the object revered — a representation by the intellect. The
divine reality is now brought to the mind in the form of
abstract conceptions. God is declared to be ' good/ or
' unknown,' or ' unchanging.' Here, if there be any picture,
any concrete substance and filling added by the mind to the
abstract conception, this is clearly a mere auxiliary and
accompaniment ; the prime and dominant thing is the con-
ception itself, whose meaning always exceeds any special
illustrations of the moment. The tangible ' stuff ' of ex-
perience, whether outer or inner, now thins out or utterly
disappears, and with it all extension, all spatial quality in
the medium of representation. If the thinker still affirms
some spatial quality, he affirms it by means of spaceless
ideas, and not by images. And while time inevitably re-
mains to characterize the mental process itself, there is
this loosening of the bond between medium and object, that
the temporal features of the thought-process do not of
necessity pass over and characterize the object thought of.
The conception may run its full course in but a second of
time ; the object thought of may, in this fleeting act, be
affirmed to exist from everlasting to everlasting.

These abstract conceptions, which are now the medium
used to represent the object, are acts of the mind, wherein

The Escape from Imagery 249

it attends to and means various relations, without the actual
presence or image of the facts that are related. Were I
to ask in a particular situation, " Is this like that ? '
" Will it contribute to the end in view ? " " What is its
reason ? " " What its cause ? " "Of what class of objects
is it a member ? " the questions themselves are based
upon a sense of certain relations — the relations of likeness
and contrast, of means and end, of premiss and conclusion,
of cause and effect, of genus and species. As in the use of
imagery and of inner experience, so also here we employ rela-
tions ; but it is a different group of relations, a group that is
natively far less prominent. A distinction like that between
primary and secondary qualities in the region of sense
might here avail. We might say that the relations used
by imagination and empsychosis are the primary relations
— those of space and time, that seem to exist in physical
things ; while conception adopts as its means of presenta-
tion certain secondary relations that not only seem wholly
subordinate to these of space and time, but also, upon
reflection, urge us far less to regard them as possessed of a
reality independent of the mind.

But the intellect has not simply the power to extract and
retain these relations without their sensuous materials, but
it can rearrange and combine these relations freely. Just
as the imagination, working in the region of sense, gives
us objects whose elementary materials are always derived
from sense, but whose form and mode of combination may
be entirely novel, so the intellect may recombine and ex-
tend the relations that are its elementary materials and
thus bring before the mind new conceptions that have
never in actual experience had anything answering to them.
When the Finn or the Greek declares God to be ' all-
knowing ' he combines into an idea that goes beyond ex-
perience component ideas that are severally within the
borders of experience. Or when St. Augustine says, " Thou
art the true God, the only omnipotent, the eternal and in-
comprehensible, and infinite. Ever-living, and nothing

250 Psychology of the Religious Life

dies in Thee, for Thou art immortal and inhabitest eternity,
Wonderful in the Eyes of the Angels, inexpressible, un-
searchable, and of perfection so great as wants a name.
Strong and powerful, and greatly to be feared, without
beginning and without end, Thyself the beginning and the
end of all things. Existing before time was, Governor and
Lord of all that thou hast made."1 The ideas here are
clearly derived from the common exercise of intellectual
abstraction, but with combinations that exceed experience
— "existing before time was," "omnipotent," "infinite."
We know from common life what ' power ' is, what ' know-
ledge ' is ; we know what in special cases ' all ' is ; and
while the combination " all-powerful " or omnipotent is
never experienced, yet it is as definite and clear to thought
as ' centaur ' or ' mermaid ' is to the imagination. No man
knows what the concrete fulfilment of omniscience or
omnipotence would be ; yet in the abstract, in their mere
form and inter-relation, they are entirely definite.

What shall we say of the mental means, the medium,
employed, when the worshipper turns against all conceptions
whatever, all acts of intellect — when the Alexandrian
mystic, for example, places God above all predicates, higher
than goodness, higher than any qualities we may name or
think ? Or when the Hindu worshipper declares that the
life divine is without pain or pleasure, without thought and
without desire ? Then, indeed, we seem to have renounced
not only sensuous imagery and the characteristics of our
own inner life, but even all definite conceptions of the
intellect.

We are here face to face with that mysterious process of
idealization, of which more will be said later. But even now
we should not overlook the fact that from early times
religion involves a vague sense of something more impressive
than the objects which experience actually presents. And
this is often true, even when — as with those gods in the
form of animals or of living men — the physical presence of

1 St. Augustine : Meditations, Engl. by Stanhope, 1704, p. 227.

The Escape from Imagery 251

the divinity seems to leave no opportunity for the religious
object to exceed experience, and to involve anything like
idealization. Yet even here, powers are ascribed to the
being which are not actually perceived. The reverenced
bull or crocodile or king is felt, perhaps, to control the
weather or the productiveness of the soil by some vague
quality belonging to it alone. Its powers may in general
be like those of common men, and yet there is also something
apart, more fateful, more to be guarded and regarded.
And this, it seems to me, has in it, even though much
darkened, the very essence of the Ideal. In spite of all that
we have said about drawing upon the material or the
abstract relations of sensuous experience, and of our inner
life, yet there is here a vague craving, an incoherent assertion,
of something that exceeds in power and value anything
that experience itself has yet made clear. That the fact
which will satisfy this craving has never been directly
experienced, does not make less real the craving itself nor the
vague definiteness of the anticipated object.

Such vague definiteness — the assertion of realities whose
relations or whose effects are definite, but whose intrinsic
character is unknown — is common enough. If, for instance,
I ask some one to bring me what he will find on a certain
chair in the next room ; the object is, by its position,
sufficiently defined for him to recognize it. He may or may
not imagine the object correctly upon receiving his com-
mission, but if he holds clear the instruction as to where it
will be found, the correctness or the error of his imagery is
of no consequence for the success of his errand.

Now, instead of definite perceptual relations, like those of
space and time, or of the intellect with its interest in reasons,
causes, classification, distinctions, there are also what we
might call relations that are primarily emotional. I may say
to a child, " Go into the next room, and you will find " — not
something on the chair (a cold space relation), nor something
that will explain (a cold intellectual relation), but — " some-
thing you will like." Here the object is defined for him

252 Psychology of the Religious Life

purely by reference to its effect upon his feelings. It is a
vague definiteness of connection with himself ; it gives no
clear description of the object, yet defines it for the child
so that he unfailingly pounces upon the new toy or box of
sweetmeats there awaiting him.

And, furthermore, there are relations that are primarily
volitional. Imagine a child, eager to build a house of blocks :
he has progressed to a certain point, but the roof keeps
falling in. I say to him, " In the closet is the thing you
need " ; and he, after searching, finally brings out a longish
stick that serves as roof-tree, and his end is gained. Here
the object intrinsically blank for him, is defined solely by
reference to his purpose. The intellectual element is here
at work, it is true, but now subordinated utterly to Will.

Such trivial instances will perhaps make clearer the
religious method, so paradoxical, when the mystic affirms
that God is neither one nor many, is not to be called good,
nor to be spoken of even as having being ; but that he is
higher than any thought that the mind of man can conceive.
To many, all this has seemed mere folly and self-contradic-
tion. And philosophers have plumed themselves on pointing
out the inconsistency here. Yet such statements are not
utterly without meaning. They are, in substance, an
admonition that even our highest thoughts miss the intrinsic
character of Divinity, and that It is to be defined as the
fulfilment, rather, of that to which our emotion and purpose
points. Inasmuch as the worshipper declares God to be
higher than any of our thoughts, there is left, by the word
' higher,' at least an emotional relation by which his place
is mentally fixed. He is that Being which better fulfils our
sense of value, of sublimity, than anything imagination or
reason can prefigure. A nice dissection of the mental
substance would show some intellectual fibre even here ;
the state is not one where intellect has completely dis-
appeared. For in using such terms as ' fulfilment,' ' com-
pletion,' and ' higher ' we are still in the realm of ideas, of
conceptions. Yet the very fact that, save for this vague,

The Escape from Imagery 253

most abstract relation, intellect has withdrawn, and feeling
and desire now rule, is well worth marking. The medium
is now neither the concrete substance of outer sense, nor of
inner experience ; nor does the object receive detail from
thought or conception. These are abandoned, and the
object is merely something we move toward, an object of
longing, or of ecstasy. This, however, is not to return to
mere empsychosis ; for the reverent mind does not introduce
these purposes and feelings into divinity, and declare
these to be its nature. They merely point toward it ;
they promise an experience of perfection, which, however,
can never be described. For want of a better word, and to
mark the departure here made from ordinary intellectual
conception, we might say that this is requisitive or desiderate
portrayal. There is here postulated an utter satisfaction of
desire or of purpose, not of intellectual desire — i.e. the desire
for explanation, causal and logical — but rather of non-
intellectual desires, chief among which are the longing for
full companionship and for perfect beauty ; and so much
of intellect as enters is merely to express its own subordina-
tion to these other powers of our being.

Yet we must not think that these various powers always
appear quite single and alone. Often, it is true, as intellect
comes forward, imagery and dramatic action in the divine
character fade into the background or, if prominent, are
felt more as a device of symbolism than as literal truth.
But different groups of men, even when they rely much on
abstract conception, differ greatly in the importance which
they attach to the sensuous representation of the divine.
With all its reputation for intellectual subtlety, the religious
Orient thinks persistently in gorgeous images. The Upani-
shads, the great Indian classics of religious philosophy, are
like a picture-book in comparison with our arid Occidental
treatises on such themes. It is mature and deep, but with
the maturity and depth of a Plato, rather than of an
Aristotle. The West probably presents much clearer exam-
ples of intellect in isolation. And in the West, among reli-

2 54 Psychology of the Religious Life

gious bodies, Protestantism is more inclined to grasp its
religious truth by thought than is Catholicism. And of
Protestant churches, doubtless the Scotch Presbyterians,
or the New England Congregationalists, show the in-
tellectual tendency in clear and organized strength. The
Scotch are at once given to worship and to dialectic. And
Protestantism generally was in part an intellectual rebellion
against the power of Rome quite as truly as it was a protest
against practical abuses in the church.

And now to sum up briefly the gains and losses involved
in some of the different modes of representing the character
of divinity.

The disadvantages of the physical, the dramatic, and even
the purely imaginative presentment — their failure to
express such qualities as life without end or beginning,
perfect knowledge and unwavering love — have perhaps
already been made sufficiently clear. Thought can attain
results which the imagination fails to compass. Yet we
must admit that sense and imagination are in many respects
superior to abstract thought. Whatever is physically before
one, brings with it a sense of reality that is too often wanting
in objects that make no appeal to hand or eye. Normally,
a flood in China is to us far less significant than one among
our own people. The earthquake of Lisbon seems almost
unreal in comparison with that of Messina or of San Francisco.
Undoubtedly up to a certain stage of culture, and, indeed,
for much of the life of those even on the highest stage,
things gain in value, in influence upon our conduct, as they
are sensibly present. To such a degree are we still in the
bonds of matter and of sense ! So that we should put it to
the credit of all physical modes of presenting the divinity —
whether these images be adored or only venerated — that
they help to make the religious object real, insistent, and
impelling, in a way that the imagination and the intellect
at best can only occasionally equal but not surpass.

Imagination also — and for convenience sake, let us
include under it what I have called ' empsychosis ' — has a

The Escape from Imagery 255

special merit. It helps to rid us of the crudity, the stiffness,
the want of elevation, which physical presentations so
often have. The movement and life which the imagination
introduces into its portrayals can, in part, be given also by
religious drama and by impersonation. And the ritual of
the religious service, in so far as it symbolizes the divine
character, does also in a measure add movement and action
to the immobility of mere idol or image. But, after all, it
is only in the imagined world that such high themes can be
brought before us in their greatest beauty and fullness.
In such a world the objects are still concrete and definite,
and possessed often of an almost bodily presence, but with-
out the subtle confinement and want which is so commonly
felt with even the most perfect physical things when used as
actual representations of the Ideal.

Abstract thought, in its turn, can in many ways outstrip
both our senses and our imagination. We can conceive
of Infinities — of pure number, or time, or space — which we
cannot at all imagine. We can, by thought, conceive of an
extent and perfectness of mental qualities which we cannot
now experience. There is consequently a range in the work
of intellect which gives it an office that nothing else can hold.
And though some are by habit impatient of thought in the
field of religion, yet the higher reaches of faith are, in fact,
incurably thoughtful. And if there be pallor in objects
viewed purely by intellect, their want of warmth and tactile
solidity is part of the price paid for the logical truth and
harmony which thought at its best attains. There is also
in the use of intellect a virtue shared by what I call de-
siderate portrayal — where all definiteness of conception is
rejected, except that the object satisfies desire — the virtue
of being at once fixed and yet capable of indefinite advance.
Such, for example, is the idea of perfect knowledge. What
would have seemed to Homer sufficient to satisfy this idea
would not satisfy a Kant or a Darwin ; and even! their
feeling as to the nature of its fulfilment would doubtless
change could they benefit by the attainments of thirty

256 Psychology of the Religious Life

centuries to come. Yet the ideal of knowledge is all
the while definite, even though all the while changing.
This character is also in those demands, left almost in-
tellectually empty, for something that shall satisfy all
feeling and effort. In such bold demanding, where all the
while there is hesitation to state definitely what will satisfy
the demand, provision is made for endless growth as man's
own nature becomes widened and refined. Freedom
is also attained from a certain tyranny which old ideas,
however large, too often exercise over us.

Finally, it must be said for symbolism that it secures
the benefit of imaginative vividness and beauty, without
suffering the loss which comes of neglecting thought, and
also without the great restriction which fixity of thought
imposes. Without forgoing the emotional stir which comes
of sight and sound, it makes use of intellect ; and, further-
more, by permitting a free interpretation of the symbol,
facilitates the removal and purification of ideas which
enlarging life requires. Taking all things into account,
there would seem to be ample justification for retaining not
only imagery along with thought and rich emotions, but
of going further and attaching all of these to physical
objects, as with the bread and wine of the familiar Christian
rite. The great leaders of religion seem to have felt in-
stinctively that all possible means might be employed to
impress upon men the character and reality of the spiritual
world.

Thus far we have been considering the different mental
media in which the objects of worship are represented. We
shall now pass from these contrasting processes of portrayal,
and attend to the form and character of the beings portrayed
— the contrasts in the nature of the Divine.

CHAPTER XIX

MANY GODS AND ONE GOD : THE MOTIVES FOR

INCREASE

r \ AHERE is a stage in religion when men believe in spirits
1 innumerable. Every rock and spring, every tree and
mountain, the winds and clouds, the stars and moon and
sun, the birds and animals and insects, the endless spaces
underground and in the air about and in the upper sky,
either are strange beings that can influence man's fortune,
or are peopled with strange beings.

Illustrations of this breadth of belief could be drawn
from many peoples, including the native races of America.
The Hidatsa Indians, we are told,1 worship, beside certain
higher powers, " everything in nature. Not man alone,
but the sun, the moon, the stars, all the lower animals,
all trees and plants, rivers and lakes, many boulders and
other separated rocks, even some hills and buttes which
stand alone — in short, everything not made by human
hands, which has an independent being, or can be in-
dividualized, possesses a spirit, or, more properly, a shade."
The Eskimos of Hudson Bay seem as ready as these Indians
to attribute a spirit to every natural object that attracts
the interest. They believe that each person is attended
by a mysterious being, malign in character, who must be
propitiated. But besides these, every cove, every point of
land, or jutting rock, has its local daemon ; there are spirits
of the sea, of the land, of the sky, spirits of the winds and

1 Mathews : Ethnog. and Philol. of the Hidatsa Indians, 1877, p. 48.
s 257

258 Psychology of the Religious Life

the clouds — of everything in nature1. In the religion of the
Zufiis we find a great company of mysterious beings — the
Earth Mother, the Salt Mother, the Corn Father, the Corn
Mother, the White Shell Woman, the Red Shell Woman, the
Turquoise Man, the Plumed Serpent, gods of War, paternal
and ancestral gods, gods of the heavens — the Morning Star,
the Evening Star, Orion, the Pleiades, the Pole Star, all
the fixed stars — and even then the range and number of
these Powers is far from being told.2 The belief in a count-
less multitude of spirits, of whom most are malignant and
need to be propitiated, seems to a recent observer to be the
main substance of the religion of the Koreans ; every home
is subject to daemons, and the outer world, here, there, and
everywhere, is filled with their presence : ' They haunt
every umbrageous tree, shady ravine, crystal spring, and
mountain crest. On green hill-slopes, in peaceful agricul-
tural valleys, in grassy dells, on wooded uplands, by lake
and stream, by road and river, in north, south, east, and
west, they abound, making malignant sport out of human
destinies. They are on every roof, ceiling, fire-place, kang,
and beam. They fill the chimney, the shed, the living-room,
the kitchen — they are on every shelf and jar. In thousands
they waylay the traveller as he leaves his home, beside him,
behind him, dancing in front of him, whirring over his head,
crying out upon him from earth, air, and water. They are
numbered by thousands of billions, and it has been well said
that their ubiquity is an unholy travesty of the Divine
Omnipresence." 3

The ghosts of the dead, mingling with the host of spirits
of natural objects, swell the countless company until the
mind of the rude believer is bewildered, and at times is
brought to the verge of insanity, such is the confusion of

1 Turner : " Ethnog. of Ungava District," Eleventh An. Rep. Bureau
of Ethnol., 1894, pp. 193 f.

2 Stevenson : " The Zuni Indians," Twenty-third An. Rep. Bureau of
Ethnol., 1904, pp. 22 ff.

3 Bishop : Korea and Hey Neighbours, 1898, II, 227 f. ; cf. Frazer :
Golden Bough, 1900, III, 55 f.

Many Gods and One God 259

this world in which he dwells. This confusion is not due
entirely to the difficulty of keeping the mind clear in such a
cloud of witnesses, but in part to the need of heeding all
these spirits practically. The man must avoid all those
acts that will give offence to them, he must propitiate by
proper rites those whom he may unwittingly have offended,
or upon whose domain he must infringe in his hunting or
fishing, in the gathering of his crops, or in his warfare.
There is here an irregular and indiscriminate belief in
mysterious powers, manlike and yet different from men.
And amongst these there often is no single ruling power.
The natives of New Zealand, for example, seem in olden
times to have had no knowledge of a Supreme Being, and
little sympathy with the thought of one when it was proposed
to them : " Speaking to Te Heuheu, the powerful Chief of
Taupo, of God, as being the creator of all things," says one
who was for many years a resident in New Zealand,1 " he
ridiculed the idea, and said, ' Is there one maker of all things
amongst you Europeans ? Is not one a carpenter, another
a blacksmith, another a shipbuilder, and another a house-
builder ? And so it was in the beginning ; one made this,
another that : Tane made trees, Ru mountains, Tanga-roa
fish, and so forth. Your religion is of to-day, ours from
remote antiquity. Do not think, then, to destroy our ancient
faith with your fresh-born religion."

But the human mind, if for no other reason than the need
of inner peace, seems unable to abide for ever an unordered
spiritual company. We find widespread the beginnings of
some system and simplification of the world of divine powers.
A group of divinities, perhaps even some single divinity,
stands out and becomes the controlling power among the
gods of that people, and the other gods are conceived as ruled
or in some other way subordinated. Examples of such an
elevation could be found among those peoples whose beliefs
have just been described. The|Hidatsa Indians, with their

1 Taylor : Te Ika A Maui, or New Zealand and its Inhabitants, 1855,
P- 13-

260 Psychology of the Religious Life

worship of everything in nature, believe in an Ancient and
Immortal Man who made all things ; believe also in Mahopa,
" an influence or power above all other things." x So, too,
the Eskimos of Hudson Bay believe that the innumerable
malignant spirits that infest earth and water and sky are
all under the control of a great spirit, Tung ak.2 And with
the Zufiis, the strange variety of gods connected with war
and planting and heavenly bodies have over them the Sun-
Father, who always was and always will be ; with whom
there is connected a supreme life-giving Power, A'wona-
wil'ora, that pervades all space.3 Above the shamans and
totems, above the sacred animals and the mythic thunder-
birds of the Siouan faith, there seems to have been a chief
mysterious or divine power in the Sun.4 The Sun likewise
stood high, if not highest, among the divinities worshipped
in ancient Peru. An early native reporter of the land —
himself an Inca — tells us that the Sun was the sole God of
the Incas, yet this ' sole God ' had an unworshipped wife
and sister, the Moon ; and above them appeared dimly
a still higher Being. " Besides adoring the Sun as a visible
god . . . the Kings Yncas and their amautas, who were
philosophers, sought by the light of nature for the true
supreme God, our Lord, who created heaven and earth."
Him they called Pachacamac ; and this " may be trans-
lated ' He who does to the universe what the soul does to the
body.' "5 From a still earlier narrative it seems clear that
this Pachacamac had been the chief god of the Indians before
the coming of the conquering Incas with their worship of
the Sun as supreme. And by a political and intellectual
accommodation and compromise, not without parallel else-

1 Mathews : Ethnog. and Philol. of the Hidatsa Indians, 1877, p. 48.

2 Turner : " Ethnog. of Ungava District," Eleventh An. Rep. Bureau
of Ethnol., 1894, pp. 193 f.

3 Stevenson : " Zufii Indians," Twenty-third An. Rep. Bureau of
Ethnol., 1904, pp. 22 f.

4 McGee : "The Siouan Indians," Fifteenth An. Rep. Bureau of Ethnol.,
1897, pp. 182 ff.

5 First Part of the Royal Commentaries of the Yncas, by the Ynca
Garcilasso de la Vega, tr. Markham, 1869, pp. 101 ff.

Many Gods and One God 261

where, both great divinities had taken their uncertain
place in the new religion.1 It is but one instance of the
many vicissitudes through which the mind often goes in
bringing into some harmony and order the world of spiritual
life.

An effort to bring order into this higher world can be
seen also among the Arabs before the coming of Islam.
They peopled with supernatural beings the vast solitudes
amidst which they dwelt, and fancied that every rock and
cave and tree had its jinn, or presiding genius. But they
believed in a ruling spirit, not of places only, but also of
bodies of men ; each tribe had its patron deity ; and over
all the tribes — in answer to some vague national feeling —
there was the chief god Allah, afterward destined to be
God alone.2

A further example of dim unbound association, and yet
with the beginnings of a rule and order like some great but
loose world-empire, is the picture given in Homer. Besides
Zeus and the other Olympians, there are Poseidon and
Hades and Persephone and all the older but still living race
of gods — Okeanos and Mother Tethys, Kronos and lapetos,
now exiled and in gloom. Below and around are all ranks and
orders of divinity, through the many lesser gods and the
spirits resident in natural objects like the rivers, down to
heroes in whom flowed the blood of gods. Nominally the
world is ruled by three equal divinities who are brothers —
Zeus, to whom belongs the sky and the upper air, Poseidon
the ruler of the sea, and Hades Lord of the Underworld.3
But in reality we find that Poseidon practically acknow-
ledges the supremacy of Zeus, while Hades is at times
referred to as Zeus of the Underworld. Zeus had overcome
the older generation of gods and confined them in misty
Tartarus. He had thus suppressed his elders ; he had now
subordinated and was beginning to absorb his nominal peers,

1 See Travels of Pedro de Cieza de Leon, tr. Markham, 1864, pp. 251 ff.

2 Palmer : Introd. to Qur'an, p. xi f.

3 Iliad, XV, 187 f.

262 Psychology of the Religious Life

so that all others were beginning to be either his ministers
and subjects, or else but manifestations of him under a
different name or form. Such a monarchal system of gods
is, of course, still a polytheism ; but it is polytheism that
has taken an important step toward monotheism.

But often, even when the number of great divinities has
been much reduced, there is a check to the unifying trend,
before it attains even the monarchal form. The spiritual
world is for a long time left in the control of several equal
powers, each acting as a curb upon the others. Thus at
certain periods there seems to have been some approach
to equality among the earlier Babylonian gods, Anu and
Bel ; or Anu, Bel, and Ea,1 — the gods, respectively, of
heaven, earth, and the deep. And in Greece the relation,
already mentioned, of the three great gods, each with his
separate domain, indicates a belief that is still far from
monarchy. It is rather that of an easy federation.

The condition of the world described in the Zend-Avesta
may serve as a final example of a very reduced number of
great supernatural powers, but still with a kind of inde-
pendent sovereignty in each. In portions of that sacred
canon there is pictured two primeval spirits with opposite
strivings — a better thing and a worse, as to thought, as to
word, and as to deed. Between these two, men must choose
aright. And the choice which still is open to men, was at one
time open to many spirits and lesser divinities. The demon-
gods chose the Worse Mind and rushed to him, while Piety
and sovereign Power and the Good Mind and the Righteous
Order clave together.2 All creation issues from these two
independent and opposing powers : Ahura Mazda, the
Blessed Spirit, creates the sixteen good lands of earth ;
and with each, Angra Mainyu, ' who is all death/ creates
some special evil — serpents, winter, sinful lusts, unbelief,
mosquitoes ! r

1 Jastrow : Religion of Babylonia and Assyria, 1898, pp. 146 fif.

2 Gathas, XXX, 2-7 (XXXI, 29 ff.).

3 Vendidad, I (IV, 4-10).

Many Gods and One God 263

Let these illustrate religion maintaining variety, contrast,
opposition, in the gods. Over against these must be set the
few forms of religion where Unity is attained.

The idea that the divine powers are not many but are one
has been reached by individual men or small groups in
widely distant regions — by philosophers in Greece ; by
men like Amon-hotep IV in Egypt ; x perhaps by Confucius ; 2
or that old king of Tezcuco, at least in his clearer vision,
though not always ; 3 or by the modern Zoroastrians.4 But
there seems reason to believe that in no large and social
way has monotheism been held except by three religions
closely allied in history as well as in character — Judaism,
Islam, and Christianity. And even here the faith in One
God appears only with struggle and with compromise.
Jehovah of the Jews was certainly not at first conceived
monotheistically. He was a special patron god, besides
whom there were many gods, especially those of the foes of
Israel. Still farther back was a belief in many spirits or
divinities, not even subject to a single ruler — traces of which
in the Bible are seen in the use of the plural ' Elohim '
(though this later came to mean a single Being), instead
of Jehovah, or Yahveh.5 Islam, too, emerged from an
earlier belief in many gods, of whom Allah was merely chief ;
and in Mohammed's time the images of these gods, to the
number of several hundred, were to be seen and worshipped
in what was later the temple of the One God, the Kaabah
at Mecca.6 To the spirit of polytheism lasting over into
Christianity I have already referred — a reference which
might be extended, if one wished, by speaking of the
popular understanding of the doctrine of the Trinity,

1 A remarkable form of monotheism — the many gods being but an
expression and creation of one sole god — is presented occasionally in the
Book of the Dead. See XV, and the Papyrus of Nesi-Khonsu.

2 Analects, IV, 15.

3 Bancroft : Native Races, 1886, III, 197 f.

4 Jackson : " A Religion nearly Three Thousand Years Old," Century
Magazine, Sept., 1906, Vol. L, p. 700.

5 Robertson Smith : Religion of the Semites, 1894, p. 445.

6 Palmer : Introd. to Qur'an, pp. xii f.

264 Psychology of the Religious Life

which is at times felt to consist of three distinct yet closely
united individuals — a form of tritheism with more or less
strong leanings toward the unity of the three.

And along with the compromising and struggling Unity
in these religions, one ought to speak of those somewhat
confused and temporary successes toward unity in other
religions of ancient times — momentary successes attained by
some wider company of worshippers, rather than by those
more solitary and exceptional rulers or schools of philosophy
already mentioned. In the sacred Vedas of India there is
the thought of many gods, individual and distinct. Yet
there is also a tendency clearly appearing at times to blur
and perhaps to erase their individuality. Some hint of
this appears even in the account of the Storm Gods, the
Maruts, who are said to be entirely alike ; none is younger,
none older, " like the spokes of a wheel, no one is last." *
Agni, the god of Fire, is one in many manifestations : Agni
is in the water, in the stone, in plants and forests, in heaven.
He is the sun, the lightning, the flame; Agni finally is declared
to be the host of the Storm Gods, to be Aditi, to be Indra, and
wide-ruling Vishnu, King Varuna whose laws are firm,
Mitra the wondrous one, Aryman lord of beings. 2 But again,
the whole is unified about some different mental centre.
A mysterious divinity Aditi, the Boundless, the Infinite,
is praised as the reality of all the gods, and of whatever else
exists. " Aditi is the heaven, Aditi the sky, Aditi the
mother, the father, the son. All the gods are Aditi, the
five clans, the past is Aditi, Aditi is the future."3

And a like unity, caught for an instant, but almost in the
very glimpse confused and lost, is found in Homer. The
self-same event may, by the same speaker, be attributed
to several gods and, in the next breath, to God simply ; as
if men felt that there was some single or indistinguishable
power including all those divinities known by different

1 Vedic Hymns, V, 60, 5 (XXXII, 352) ; V, 59, 6 (XXXII, 347) ;
V, 58, 5 (XXXII, 343).

8 Ibid., II, i (XLVI, 186 f.). 3 Ibid., I, 89, 10 (XXXII, 254 f.).

Many Gods and One God 265

names. Thus Agamemnon, when excusing his anger to-
ward Achilles, says : " It is not I who am the cause, but
Zeus and Moira and Erinys that walketh in the darkness.
. . . What could I do ? It is God who accomplisheth all.
Eldest daughter of Zeus is Ate who blindeth all, a power
of bane." Then he tells how even Zeus was once blinded
by this Ate, and concludes : " But since thus blinded was
I, and Zeus bereft me of my wit, fain am I to make amends."1
The power, of which Agamemnon here speaks under the
names of Zeus and Moira (Fate) and Erinys, he sums up in
the next sentence in the single word ' God,' and at the next
moment it is ascribed to Ate, and finally the god-sent blind-
ness is attributed to Zeus alone. The frequency with which
in these poems events are ascribed simply to God — though
scholars might differ in regard to the niceties of translation
here — perhaps indicates that at times the entire divine
power was, for the instant, viewed without distinction into
conflicting persons. The epics thus seem to show side by
side the two opposite movements of thought which are so
characteristic of religion — the movement toward many
spiritual powers, and again toward a single God. Later
thinkers in Greece held consciously and persistently to the
monotheistic view, though polytheism never lost its hold
upon the popular imagination. In this respect the develop-
ment is somewhat like that which appears in the Hebrew
scriptures, where pure monotheism was attained by the
poets and prophets, while the people clung long and stub-
bornly to gods other than Jehovah.

Having set forth in this rough and hasty way the con-
trasts in the number and organization of the gods, we might
now attempt to trace some of the motives which lead to
such divergence. Why a myriad of divine beings for some ;
and few, or only one, for others ?

The causes which lead men to believe that gods and
spirits are many are themselves many. In the first place,

1 Iliad, XIX, 86 ff.

266 Psychology of the Religious Life

primitive man sees about him countless objects and occur-
rences that suggest the presence of animating spirits. The
particular fierce wind that now visits him is an angry being,
while the gentle and beneficent rain seems the work of a
spirit well-disposed. And for the same reason that the
wind is independent and due to a separate spirit, so there
are many different winds, coming from different directions
and having different characters, and suggesting a variety
of spirits. And similarly, sun, moon, and stars ; springs,
rivers, and seas ; the rocks and trees and all the innumer-
able company of beasts and birds ; the aches and pains and
diseases of himself and of his people — these strike his mind
as isolated facts : the interest in each is, like a child's,
an isolated interest, and each is made a separate being, an
individual, like himself and yet different.

But not alone the forms which outward nature shows ;
the very creatures of his dreams are taken as realities. It
requires much training to rid men of the conviction that
the experiences of sleep are not real and of the same signifi-
cance as those of waking — or indeed of even greater signifi-
cance.1 The savage who dreams of visiting a distant land,
and of speaking with those who have died, feels that he
has actually made the journey and seen the dead. And
doubtless those monsters that live on in the belief of men —
dragons, harpies, sphinxes, griffins, centaurs, gorgons,
hydras, and chimaeras dire — are, in a large measure,
but different forms of primitive nightmare accepted as
reality.

But as a result of dreaming, and from other causes, there
is a further tendency among early men to duplicate and
multiply their spirits and gods. The belief in ' doubles ' in
part arises from the fact that while the body is in one place,
it may in dream-life be far away, and still retain an appear-
ance exactly like the person who remains asleep. Shadows,
persons' reflections in water or elsewhere — even in the

1 Cf. the still present attachment to " dream books " ; and, for a
feeling quite on another plane, Bigelow : The Mystery of Sleep, 1903.

Many Gods and One God 267

pupil of another's eye — help to strengthen the belief in
doubles and little indwelling ghosts.

But the number of such indwelling or accompanying
spirits need not be limited to one. Indeed, the belief that
each person possesses more than a single soul is not un-
common, and can be defended with a show of reason. A
Minnetaree, who believed that each man had four souls—
since in this way gradual death could be accounted for, by
a successive departure of souls — was heard " quietly dis-
cussing this doctrine with an Assineboine, who believed in
only one soul to each body."1 And a Chippewa, asked to
explain why he thought that each human being had two
souls, replied : " It is known that, during sleep, while the
body is stationary, the soul roams over wide tracts of
country, visiting scenes, persons, and places at will. Should
there not be a soul, at the same time, to abide with the
body, it would be as dead as earth, and could never reappear
in future life."2 The Calabar negroes believe that every
man has four souls — the soul that survives death, the dream-
soul, the shadow on the path, and the ' bush soul,' which
exists in the form of an animal in the forest.3 So, too, it
was an article of faith among the Caribs, that a soul existed
in the head, a soul in the heart, and a soul wherever pulsa-
tions of an artery were felt. In Borneo and in the Malay
Peninsula there is a belief that every man has seven souls.
The Alfoors of Poso in Celebes believe that he has three,
while the Laos attribute thirty spirits or souls to different
regions of the body.4 After such intemperance of belief in
souls, the Egyptian doctrine that each single being had his
' double ' and two souls besides — his Ka, his Ba, and his
Khu6 — or the Aristotelian tenet of three souls, a vegetative,
an animal and a rational soul, seems moderate indeed.

1 Mathews : Ethnog. and Philol. of the Hidatsa Indians, 1877, p. 50.

- Schoolcraft : Archives of Aborig. Knowl., 1860, VI, 665.

' Kingsley : Travels in West Africa, 1897, p. 459, and cf. p. 517.

4 Frazer : Golden Bough, 1900, III, 418 f. ; Skeat : Malay Magic,
1900, pp. 50, 411, 454, 578 ; Roth : " Natives of Borneo," Jour. Anthrop.
Institute of Gt. Brit, and Ireland, XXI (1892), p. 117.

5 Sayce : Religions of Ancient Egypt and Babylonia, 1902, pp. 60-64.

268 Psychology of the Religious Life

Now what is true of man holds true of all things, accord-
ing to early belief. And consequently existences both higher
and lower than man are similarly reduplicated. That even
inanimate objects were felt to be ' spiritually ' repeated, is
shown by a usage in offering food to the dead, with the
thought that they partake, not of the physical part of the
food, but of its double, invisible to us. Indeed, spiritual
sustenance and comfort may be had even from cheap
imitations of food or of other things desired. The Li K\
of the Chinese commends the use of such " vessels to the
eye of fancy " as being superior to the use of real offerings —
partly because spirits are different from living men and
therefore should be treated differently, yet partly, perhaps,
because the dead apparently are too stupid to know the
difference between imitation and reality. Zang-tze seems
to have been deeply shocked when Duke Hsiang offered to
the shade of his deceased wife real pickles in real vinegar —
doubtless a favourite dish of hers while living — instead of
the more suitable imitations.1 Moreover, not only beings
below man, but those above him, had their doubles, or
replicas. The god Horus of Egypt had his four Khu, or
souls ; while Ra, the Sun-god, had seven bird-like souls or
spirits.2 And among the Greeks, though perhaps from an
entirely different motive, a god might have various con-
trasting appearances : Dionysos had not only a human
form, but also that of a goat and a bull.3 And whether from
the notion of doubles or for some other reason, it was not
impossible to have in one place two temples to the same
god.4

In attempting to name the influences that make for mani-
foldness of divinity, it must be said, too, that the ritual
service and the honour of the gods may increase their
number. Thus the sacred utensils and the materials of

1 Lt Ki, II, i, 3, 3 and 6 and 19 (XXVII, 148, 151, 154).

1 Sayce : Religions of Ancient Egypt and Babylonia, 1902, pp. 61, 51.

Frazer : Golden Bough, 1900, II, 167.

4 Herodotus, I, 22 ; cf. II, 44, where the motives, however, seem to be
quite different.

Many Gods and One God 269

sacrifice may themselves become divine existences, and be
conceived as worshipping other gods. The sacred drink
of the Parsees, Haoma, is said to offer a sacrifice and prayer,
now to Drvaspa and again to the good Ashi, to be able to
bind the Turanian murderer Franghrasyan.1 And the
sacrificial post is, in the Vedas, asked to " bestow on us
treasures with offspring " and " bliss to our fields."2

Nor should we overlook the influence of names upon the
number of the gods. The feeling which the untutored mind
has for the name of a thing is difficult for some to appreciate.
An inkling of the attitude, however, can be gained by
noticing the sense of possession and mastery which the
child has in learning the name of an object ; and by re-
calling the oppressive alienation which we all feel on meeting
an old friend whose name we cannot remember. The name
of a thing, especially for the savage, is a kind of soul of the
thing itself. Savages thus have secret names for themselves
which must not be known abroad. And this is a means of
self-protection ; for one can gain magical power over
another by knowing his name. Moreover — and this brings
us nearer our own topic — if the object or person has more
than one name, there may result thereby a certain multiplica-
tion of individuality. Thus it appears that among the
Malays the two names ' Guru ' and ' Mahadewa ' for the
one divine Siva, brought into belief two distinct beings
answering to these separate terms.3 And in ancient Egypt,
the sun or Sun-god had the two names Turn and Ra, and
from these two names, it has been thought, there developed
the two distinct gods Turn and Ra, one of whom seems
afterward to have been regarded as the father of the other. 4

The possible introduction of a god still earlier than either
Turn or Ra would exemplify a still further motive which

1 Zend-Avesta, Cos Yast, IV (XXIII, 114) ; Ashi Vast, VI (XXIII,
277 f.).

• Vedic Hymns, III, 8, 6 f. (XLVI, 252).

3 Skeat : Malay Magic, 1900, p. 88.

4 Sayce : Religions of Ancient Egypt and Babylonia, 1902, pp. 81 f.,
231 ; Book of the Dead, LXXIX, 2 f. ; ' Book of Breathings ' (Budge,
P- 659).

270 Psychology of the Religious Life

acted to increase the number of the gods — the explanatory
impulse, which suggests the need of a cause even for a
divinity ; and so an older god begins to loom through the
primal mist, to be the fount and origin of the deity that is
actually worshipped. The gods must be provided with an
ancestry, like men's. Here, then, we have not merely a
scientific or explanatory impulse at work, but also that of
social imitation. The gods must be thought of not only
in the character of men, but related, as men are, to parents,
wives, and offspring. Thus the need of a parent tended to
bring from obscurity an additional god. And similarly
the need, not of a parent, however, but of a consort, seems
to have been an important factor in calling to life a number
of Babylonian and Egyptian goddesses. These goddesses,
vague and characterless, seem to have come largely from
the impulse to repeat in heaven the relations found on earth.
If men of rank usually had wives, how much more the
gods ! And the ease with which a feminine name could be
provided to match the masculine may well have made this
process run more smoothly.1 But social imitation was
here, perhaps, the chief motive power.

But if one were to be just to imitation as an active in-
fluence in forming the picture of the gods, it would have
to be pointed out that human society, as a pattern of the
divine, always shows a multitude of rulers, rather than a
single one. It is often assumed that the earthly pattern is
the single tribe or state, where there is organization under
a single head. But the actual fact before men (if not at the
moment, yet in any longer stretch) is always a conflict of
chiefs or kings : wars without, and pretenders and dis-
putants of royal power within. And so mere imitation, un-
governed by some other motive, would always tend to main-
tain polytheism and not the universal rule of a single god.
And if, instead of political patterns, the mind imitates the
variety of sources from which fashioned objects ; come,

1 Sayce : op. cit., pp. 231, 332 ; Maspero : Dawn of Civilization, tr.
McClure, 1894, pp. 105 f.

Many Gods and One God 271

creation seems naturally to be the work of many. The old
chief whose words have already been given, felt that if
human analogy were to count, the separate occupations of
men — whereby one is a blacksmith, another a carpenter ;
one builds ships, another houses — readily supported the
view that the god who made the trees was not the one who
made the mountains or the fish.1

Further, it seems evident that the contact of people
having diverse religious systems tends in early times to a
growth of the number of gods in each. Much has been
made of the influence of political union as diminishing the
number of gods and bringing on the day of monotheism,3
and more will be said of this later. But we must see, too,
that in many cases, while it makes two systems into one,
and so tends to simplification, yet it also increases the
number of gods in one of the old faiths, since this religion
accepts into its belief, and perhaps into its worship, the
gods of the people with whom there has been the union.
The Peruvian Incas, who worshipped the Sun as the chief
deity, seem also, to some extent, to have accepted the
belief in a supreme invisible god — Pachacamac, the creator
of the world — from the Indians whom they conquered.3
But often, by war and conquest, the gods of those sub-
jugated became vassals of the gods of the victors ; as when
the god of some Egyptian city — for instance, Ammon of
Thebes — rises with the fortune of his city and joins to
himself as subordinates the gods of cities conquered ; or
when, with the Babylonian successes, to Marduk are joined
the gods of the cities subject to Babylon.4 In a somewhat
similar way the Greek and Roman pantheons were en-
larged to receive many gods of peoples round about, as well

1 Taylor : Te Ika A Maui, 1855, p. 13 ; cf. p. 259 of the present
volume.

2,Cf. Fiske : The Idea of God, 1893, pp. 74 f.

3 .^Travels of Pedro de Cieza de Leon, tr. Markham, 1864, pp. 251 ff. ;
First Part of the Royal Commentaries of the Yncas, by the Ynca Garcilasso'
dejla Vega, tr. Markham, 1869, pp. 101 ff.

4 Jastrow : Religion of Babylonia and Assyria,. 1,898, pp. 54, n6. L

272 Psychology of the Religious Life

perhaps as of older populations that once possessed the
soil on which the conquerors finally were established.

Thus there is a stage of human culture where the number
of divinities can increase indefinitely ; where man, like
the child, finds no dearth of objects to fascinate and awe
him. Fickle in his own interests and without any long-
dominating purpose, it is easy for him, thus ill-organized
within, to see the world without ill-organized. The spirit
world but reflects the variety of his own inner life as well
as of the natural world about him. He is himself a war of
interests ; nature without is a scene of clashing forces ; the
political world is the embodiment of jar and conflict ; what
wonder, then, that if to these general motives are added
the more specific influences of the abounding forms of
dreamland, together with the multitude of duplicates by
reason of shadows, reflections, and the effect of words,
and much besides — what wonder if the spirit world be in-
conceivably prolific !

CHAPTER :XX

•

THE MOTIVES FOR DECREASE AND UNITY

r I ""HE number of the gods is enlarged by many influences.
JL But opposed to these, and working as by a kind of
higher Malthusian law, there are forces that decrease this
spirit population. And to these forces we must now attend.
In general there is no stronger agent for this reduction
than the desire for organization. But in its first intention,
an organized body of spirits may be no less in number than
an unorganized — just as an army need be no smaller than
the mob from which it is drilled. Indeed, the officering in
both instances may be additional, and but swell the size.
But in the spirit world the secondary effect of organization
is, that the mind, having now a ready means of thinking
the group together, does in many instances begin to hold to
the group, or to the heads of the group, at the expense of
the many individuals who compose it.

One of the early means to such a grouping (of which
something already has been said) is the projection into the
realm of spirits of the organization found in human society,
the mental copying of the patterns of connection always
at hand in the family and in the tribe and state. The sub-
ordination of gods or spirits under a chief god very soon
appears, and in a large measure it is a reflection of these
human institutions. If man rarely or never sees a human
being unless under some captain or ruler, it is but natural
that the higher beings should soon show this same organiza-
tion. Man does not merely personify. He gives social
order to the creatures of his personification. And since the
T 273

274 Psychology of the Religious Life

family form or the patriarchal or monarchal form is most
familiar, the divine society comes commonly to reflect one
of these forms. Thus the arrangement of the gods into
diads, of husband and wife, or into triads, of father, mother,
and son, is often met with. Among the gods of Babylon,
the divinities Samas and A, that were originally independent
and, indeed, both masculine, are united as man and wife, A
becoming feminine in the process, until Samas finally
absorbs the attributes of both.1 In a somewhat similar way
Ea and Dam-kina, husband and wife, have joined to them
as their son a god Asari, who earlier appears to have had no
such kinship with them.2 And in Egypt, besides such
triads as Osiris, Isis, and Horus — father, mother, and son —
there were groups of nine gods, henneads,3 related by blood,
though this blood relation seems to have been of secondary
growth, for the gods in many instances existed at first in
independence.4 That triads of gods, however, have an
attraction for the mind, which the family relation can with
difficulty fully explain, is shown by the frequency of such
groups as Anu, Bel, and Ea ; Sin, Samas, and Hadad, and
still other triads in Babylon :5 or Thor, Odhin, and Freyr ;
Odhin, Hcenir, and Loki, among the Teutons : 6 or the set
phrase, ' Zeus, Athene, and Apollo/ occurring in Homer :7
or the grouping of Brahma, Vishnu, and Siva, in India.
But often the grouping was less formal and more life-
like, as when we have a free rendering of an ancient pat-
riarchal government, Zeus ruling over his younger brethren,
his children, and his children's children — an unruly com-
pany, with petty quarrels and larger factional dissensions,
but of much cheer withal and inward comfort. It is a
picture of the older Greek ideal before democracy and specul-
ation had won the day.

1 Sayce : Religs. of Anc. Egypt and Baby I., 1902, pp. 318 f.
' Ibid., pp. 300, 326 f.

3 Maspero : Dawn of Civilization, tr. 1894, pp. 142 ff.

4 Sayce : op. cit., pp. 83 f. 5 Ibid., pp. 313 f., 321 f.

6 de la Saussaye : Religion of the Teutons, tr. Vos, 1902, p. 286.

7 Odyssey, XVIII, 235 ; IV, 341 ; cf. the grouping, Zeus and Moira
and Erinys, Iliad, XIX, 87.

The Motives for Decrease and Unity 275

With these passing illustrations of the influence of social
patterns upon the organization and unity of the gods, let
us pass to a further influence toward unity which is felt in
discerning the likeness among natural objects. It is difficult
to say whether primitive man is more adept at overlooking
similarities than at perceiving them. Many cases occur, it is
true, where objects such as boats, which to us so obviously
go in a class, in some savage language have no name common
to them all. And doubtless the early multitude of spirits is
due to an insistence on the separateness and individuality
of things. But very early an identity is seen in differing
objects. I have already mentioned the case where the
Storm-gods are described as equal, " like spokes of a wheel."
Here an easily detected likeness is felt in the differing
storms. But the mind goes further when identity is dis-
cerned in sun, lightning, plants, water, stone — and these
are all felt to be the seat and embodiment of Agni,1 simply
because, perhaps, fire has some connection with each. This
connection is clear with sun and lightning ; less clear with
plants and trees, yet these burn — fire can come from them ;
least clear with water and stone, but still the sun appears
to issue daily from the one and daily to return, while sparks
of fire may be struck from the flinty rock. Here a personal
identity and unification is effected possibly by perceiving
what would be for most of us a rather obscure common
feature, the connection with fire.

But frequently the discovered identity seems to us less
obscure, though worked out religiously in a surprising way.
A French missionary among the American Indians long
ago reported it their belief that " all the animals of each
species have an elder brother, who is, as it were, the principle
and origin of all the individuals, and this elder brother is
marvellously great and powerful. The elder brother of the
beavers, they told me, is, perhaps, as large as our cabin."2
And in a later account we are told of a belief, among the

Vedic Hymns, II, i (XLVI, 186 f.).
2 Father Le Jeune, quoted by Tylor : Primitive. Culture, 1903, II, 244.

276 Psychology of the Religious Life

Iroquois, in a " Spirit of each of the different species of
trees, of each of the species of shrubs bearing fruit, and of
the different herbs and plants. Thus there was the Spirit
of the oak, of the hemlock, and of the maple, of the whortle-
berry and of the raspberry, and also of the spearmint, and
of tobacco."1 And outside of America, a simple classifica-
tion is likewise carried into the spirit world. The Finns
believed " that every object in Nature must have a pro-
tecting deity, a haltia, a genius — some Being that was its
creator, and thenceforth looked after it." And these
watchful deities were attached, not to the single object,
but to the class : one ruled over the wild-cherry trees,
another over the junipers, a third over the mountain ash,
and so on.2 As a final illustration — In Buyan, a mythical
island of happiness believed in by the Russian people,
" there are to be found ' the Snake older than all snakes,
and the prophetic Raven, elder brother of all ravens,' and
the Bird, the largest and oldest of all birds, with iron beak
and copper claws, and the Mother of Bees, eldest among
bees."3 Such species-deities, whose similarity to the
Platonic Ideas has been noticed more than once, may at
first have been additional to the spirits of the individual
snakes, ravens, bees, oaks, hemlocks, maples. But in due
time the inevitable effect, as with Plato, is to take from
the sanctity of the visible instances, while their heavenly
prototype, one and invisible, alone receives full honour.
Here the species-deity is reached by introducing a blood
kinship among individuals that show likeness. The ele-
mentary logical motive, seen in all classification, is here
helped out by the imagination ; and the members of the
class being thus united by a family bond, the lowly in-
dividuals look back to their one proud example.
• But the identification and coalescence which here works
among earthly things to call up the heavenly, is active also

1 Morgan : League of the Iroquois, 1851, p. 162.

2 Castren : Finnische Mythologie, ubertr. v. A. Schiefner, 1853, pp.
105 f., 160.

3 Ralston : Songs of the Russian People, 1872, pp. 374 f.

The Motives for Decrease and Unity 277

within the heavenly sphere by itself. Gods that are alike,
whether in inherent character or in their office, tend; to lose
their individuality and to be merged in one. The ^Greeks
and Romans discovered their own gods in the worship of the
peoples about them. Herodotus finds Zeus in Bel at
Babylon ; finds him again, with Dionysus and Ares
and other Greek gods, among the divinities of Egypt.1
Tacitus, in a like spirit, recognized Mercury, Hercules,
and Mars among the gods of the Germans.2 And
the same process goes on with even more vitality within
religions more closely bound together. Among the Baby-
lonians the god As'ari of the subordinate city of Eridu was
identified with Merodach, or Marduk, of the greater city
Babylon,3 while in Egypt the many sun-gods scattered
over the land were, with closer political union, all identified
with the one Sun-god Ra.4 It is the same kind of mental
process which led some of the early missionaries in America
to identify the cross upon the temple of the Wind-god
Hurakan — whence our ' hurricane '• —with the Christian
emblem, and to encourage the legend that the Apostle
Thomas had of old evangelized America.5

But apart from any such perception of similarity and
direct identification, there is often an unconscious attrac-
tion of attributes from the less to the greater god, even while
the less remains a somewhat distinct personality. Yet the
result in the end is, that the subordinate divinity, thus
stripped of his inherent power, becomes more and more a
shadow, and at last, as a token of final absorption, yields up
even his name to his superior, making the blend complete.
Thus in the Babylonian religion the older god Ea transfers
his name to his great son Marduk ; and Bel, the old god of
Nippur, transfers his title ' lord of the lands ' to the same

1 Herodotus, I, 181 ff., II, 47-50, 63 f., II, 122 f.

2 Germania, IX, and cf. de la Saussaye : Religion of the Teutons, tr.
Vos, 1902, pp. 103, 286.

3 Sayce : Religs. of Anc. Egypt and Babyl., 1902, pp. 307, 313.
* Ibid., p. 82.

5 Reville : Religions of Mexico and Peru, 1884, p. 38.

278 Psychology of the Religious Life

great god1 — an act whose solemn importance can be appre-
ciated only when we remember that in the belief of simpler
men, as to some extent with everyone, the name is part and
parcel of one's personality. The elevation of this Marduk,
lord of Babylon, was fully expressed when he received the
names — the fifty names — and with them the powers, of the
other great divinities.2

A different form of this gradual assumption, by the greatest,
of the honour and attributes of lesser gods is found in Hindu
worship, although traces of it are also in Judaism and
Christianity. The god Vishnu takes up into his own per-
sonality the lives of a number of subordinate spirits and
divinities by the thought that they are but early and im-
perfect manifestations, are Avataras, of himself. In nine
forms has the great divinity already appeared among men —
as a fish that saved Manu's ship in the deluge ; as a tor-
toise that helped the gods to bring treasures from the sea ;
as a boar ; as a man-lion ; as a dwarf ; as Parasu-Rama —
Rama with the Ax ; as Rama&andra, the beautiful moon-
like Rama ; as Krishna ; and as the Buddha. His tenth
Avatara will be as Kalki, who will come to punish evil and
reward the good.3 This peculiar form of uniting different
divinities by the thought of successive reappearances of the
same Being permits a religion to preserve some show of
sympathy with its own history or with its rivals, by still
acknowledging in a way the earlier or opposing conceptions
of the deity.

But it must not be supposed that these specific motives
for the organization of the gods and for the reduction of
their number are thought to be all that operate. The
imitation of the union which exists in the family and in the
larger groups of men ; a growing appreciation of the like-
ness of various natural objects or occurrences, so that they
become for the mind a species or class and are united in

1 Jastrow : Relig. of Babyl. and Assyr., 1898, pp. 118, 140 f.
• Sayce : Religs. of Anc. Egypt and Babyl., 1902, p. 329.
3 de la Saussaye : Manual, Engl. tr., 1891, pp. 642 f.

The Motives for Decrease and Unity 279

some single spirit ; the tendency to regard those gods as
identical that are alike in personality or office, and for the
supreme gods to absorb the power of their subordinates,
until these, like broken barons, exist hardly as a name ; the
thought that divinities which historically are more or less
independent are but different manifestations of the same
god — these are, perhaps, some of the chief causes which
lead the mind from a belief in a disordered horde of spirits
to a belief in great ruling spirits or gods. But the desire
for organization and for order, as a good in itself, seems to
lie deep in human nature. And so we find ourselves at
times quite uselessly putting things into system because
of a sheer impulse which will not down. The sick man
wearily marks off and groups the repeating patterns on the
wall ; the monotonous dripping of water, or the ticking of
the clock, falls involuntarily into beats and measures, into
a rude hierarchy where some of the sounds are regularly
raised to honour while others are degraded. So it is probable
that behind all particular and historical inducements to
organize the gods, there is in the mind a vague and general
impulse to bring order out of chaos. And this more general
impulse works in and through and vitalizes all the special
forces for order that have here been named.

Although these forces of order and unity tend to bring
us nearer to a system in which all gods have become one,
yet they often exhaust their energy without actually
ushering in the day of Monotheism. They prepare the
way, but in the final work help comes from other sources.
May we, then, consider the mental process by which the
belief in a number of gods becomes a belief in one alone.

The motives which induce certain peoples to pass to this
final unity are not to be summed up in a phrase, as if some
one thing explained the change. The several factors already
considered which make for order contribute to the end ; but
any one of them, or all together, may easily be too highly
prized.

2 So Psychology oj the Religious Lije

Thus we may lay too much stress, it seems to me, upon
the growing appreciation of unity in Nature, leading to the
thought that the power behind Nature is likewise one. A
feeling for the connection and likeness among natural things,
as we have already seen, does help toward monotheism by
bringing in a deity for a whole group of objects, and even-
tually reduces the number of spirits and gods. But the
belief in the order and unity of the spiritual world seems to
overtake and far outstrip the feeling for the unity of Nature.
Some vague sense of the connection of all natural events
seems to be suggested by the belief in One God, rather than
to be the source of that belief. In the Book of Job, the most
diverse aspects of nature are still viewed in separation —
the proud might of the horse, the wonder of the ostrich or of
leviathan, the hoar-frost scattered like ashes, the influence
of the Pleiades or of Orion — these have no connection one
with another in the drama, so far as scientific feeling goes.
But they are all brought together in another way — by the
thought that without exception they are subject to the will
of God. He made them, understands them, holds them in
their place. The monotheism of the poet here leads to the
essential unity of Nature, rather than issues from it. The
feeling for the unity of Nature as a scientific assertion or
ideal, long before any decisive evidence for this assertion is
found in the fa'cts themselves (for men even yet assume it,
rather than prove it) — a feeling expressed in early science
by declaring that all things come from some one substance,
perhaps water, or air, or fire — this feeling is doubtless of one
blood with the desire for religious unity. Yet the religious
unity seems in history to be brother — perhaps elder brother
— to the scientific conviction, rather than its child.

And, again, the effect of the conquest of one tribe by
another, which at times (but not invariably) makes the
gods of the victors rule over the gods of the vanquished —
this which has been considered of prime significance for the
growth of the belief in a single god, we have already seen
to be important, but of no exclusive importance. It helps

The Motives for Decrease and Unity 281

to explain how a god, like an earthly monarch, should come
to have more vassals in heaven, but not how he should come
to have none. Few, too, are the peoples who meet no one
that refuses to be conquered ; and the belief in but a single
God was not born even among such irresistible conquerors.
Clear monotheism made its first widespread appearance,
not in a world-empire like Babylon or Persia, but among
an obscure people who were more often the subdued than
the subduers of their great and warlike neighbours.

What is it, then, that comes in to assist the many motives
working for unity, so that they do not spend their force
short of their goal ?

First and foremost among these final and decisive forces
comes something more inward, belonging more to the emo-
tions. In its higher development it goes by the name of
reverence. And even far down it is an attitude that tends
to lessen the value of all things beside the object worshipped,
and to drive them from the mind. Now as reverent worship
strengthens and becomes a more constant and earnest part of
life, the less tolerant can it be of rivalry. The religious
heart is not readily divided ; a change of the object of an
emotion deep and absorbing comes as a shock and cannot
be long endured. Monotheism is thus a kind of spiritual
monogamy. The soul becomes wedded to the object of its
worship, and there can be no wavering, no minor attach-
ments. Just as the deepening appreciation of marriage
brings with it the feeling that but one person can hold to
another so intimate a relation, so the deepening of the
religious spirit brings the sense that only a single god can
be a God to man. It would be idle to suggest that there
is any direct historical connection between the develop-
ment of theism and the development of marriage, except
as we have already seen the family pattern influencing the
organization of the gods. But that in the family and in
religion some common psychic forces are at work is further
hinted at by the similarity of their forms. For beside the
union to a single husband or a single wife, marriage has its

282 Psychology of the Religious Life

stage where there are many mates without subordination,
corresponding to the unorganized spirits of religion ; the
form, moreover, in which one wife is elevated above the rest
(as in China at the present day) while subordinate wives
are retained as ' little wives ' — corresponding to that stage
of theism where the supreme god has lesser divinities below
him.

But such a feeling as that of reverence must have been
greatly supported by the strengthening of social and ethical
standards generally — especially the strengthening of that
ill-defined sense of misgiving or of stress in connection with
our acts, which in its higher form we call the voice of con-
science, but which, descending, includes perhaps even the
feelings that go with primitive observances like taboo.
Now the insistence and the authority which such feelings
come to possess soon makes men attribute them to an
external and supernatural source. When public opinion
requires hospitality to strangers and adherence to one's
plighted word, or condemns thievery and murder, these
moral requirements usually appear to be due, not to the
conscious striving and desire of men, but to some command-
ment of the gods. Society's fixed forms of rebuke and
approval are involuntarily felt to be sanctioned and, indeed,
originated in heaven. This projection into a higher realm
of what comes later to be called the voice of conscience,
requires no very high stage of culture. It is found among
many early peoples. Even a little deaf-mute waif of San
Francisco, D'Estrella (as Professor James has somewhere
told us) felt that his misdeeds were disapproved by the
moon ! When on one occasion he stole money, it had to be
returned because the moon, who was his dead mother now
in the sky, condemned the act.

Now this feeling that the voice of social judgment or of
personal conscience is the divine judgment would seem to
me to be a strong force in aid of the monotheistic view.
The voice of conscience is not a confusion of tongues. Its
utterances in any one community are more or less constant

The Motives for Decrease and Umty 283

and harmonious. So in becoming the voice of the social
conscience the gods must inevitably appear to lay aside
their private, partial, and conflicting interests and become
a more harmonious and single power. As moral feeling
becomes more constant, its divine source appears to be
more constant. As conscience continues to speak the same
message, and ever with more authority, so the superhuman
world tends to lose its jangle and variety, and its oneness
becomes more and more clear.

We may also attribute something of the trend toward
monotheism to the unreflecting logic of early man. Illus-
trations have already been given of primitive success in
logical classification, where, like a veritable mediaeval
Realist, the savage gives substantive existence to class-
ideas like maple, bee, and beaver. Now, there is another
principle of logic, of which perhaps the savage makes no
use, but which has an unconscious effect certainly in later
times. And it is this. So long as the physical and intellec-
tual and moral attributes of divinity remain relatively poor,
it is easy to feel that there could be many examples of such
a being. If the gods are but a little more powerful, a little
more knowing, a little more scrupulous, than the common
man, there is no logical difficulty in supposing that there
are nearly as many of them as of men. The sun, the moon,
the wind, and numberless other things could each fulfil the
rather humble requirements of a god. In this way in-
numerable divinities can exist without intellectual let or
hindrance. But as the conception of godhood becomes
richer and rarer in its contents, then every object that is
but a little above the common level can no longer exem-
plify all that the thought of deity means for the man or
his society. And when once the thought has become so en-
nobled as to include unlimited power, resistless will, perfect
knowledge, then the consequence would seem inevitable —
there can be but one such god. Often the consequence of a
thought remains long concealed. But even logic works
with time ; and the moral and intellectual elevation of the

284 Psychology of the Relights Life

gods thus brings nearer the day when all minor and rival
deities must disappear. The process could not better be
symbolized than by the picture already given, where the
great gods of the Babylonians surrender to Marduk their
attributes and names.

And finally, as indicating in a crude way the satisfaction
of many kinds which the storm-tossed soul may find in this
quiet haven of Unity, let me quote from the diary of one
who himself experienced the change. " The practical
advantage of the new faith was evident to me at once. I
had felt it even while I was engaging all my powers to
repel it from me. I was taught that there was but one
God in the Universe, and not many — over eight millions —
as I had formerly believed. The Christian monotheism laid
its axe at the root of all my superstitions. All the vows I
had made, and the manifold forms of worship with which
I had been attempting to appease my angry gods, could
now be dispensed with by owning this one God ; and my
reason and conscience responded ' yea ! ' One God, and
not many, was indeed a glad tiding to my little soul. No
more use of saying my long prayers every morning to the
four groups of gods situated in the four points of the com-
pass ; of repeating a long prayer to every temple I passed
by in the streets ; and of observing this day for this god and
that day for that god, with vows and abstinence peculiar
to each. Oh, how proudly I passed by temples after temples
with my head erect and conscience clear, with full con-
fidence that they could punish me no longer for my not
saying my prayers to them, for I found the God of gods
to back and uphold me."1 Here the practical economy
of simplified observances as well as intellectual and emo-
tional economy of looking in but one direction, gives us
some further idea of the many influences which unite in
monotheism.

The passage from polytheism to monotheism, then, is
psychically most complex. It is brought about by many

1 Uchimura : Diary of a Japanese Convert [1895], pp. 23 f.

The Motives for Decrease and Unity 285

forces, rather than by one. Inner relief of many kinds,
outer nature, political life, social customs, logical con-
sistency, the spirit of adoration — all of these, at least,
contribute to the result. It shows how many-sided are the
facts of the religious life, and how interwoven they are
with what we often mark off as our secular activity.

In the world's history, then, two forces stand in con-
trast— the impulse to contract and limit the objects of our
reverence, and the impulse to value and to worship many
different elements. And this tendency to worship more
than some single object belongs by no means to a bygone
age or to a bygone type of mind. Indeed, it would not be
difficult to show that, were it not for what we might call
the polytheistic spirit still active in religion, we should not
have even monotheism. For although in monotheism the
movement toward unity of the gods themselves is complete,
there is possible a still further movement toward unity.
The unity within the divine character needs to be supple-
mented (many feel) until it becomes a unity both within
and without, a unity all-encompassing and absolute. For
in the belief in One God, if the world of Nature and of men
do not stand in moral opposition to the divine life, they are
at least distinct from the divine. In Pantheism, where all
these lose their separateness and individuality and are
merged in the one Divine Existence, the love of unity has
attained a further goal. Not only the gods now are one,
but man and nature only appear to be distinguishable from
God. In reality all are but parts of his life, are naught apart
from him. And in the perfection of that unity, all sense
of difference, all consciousness, at last disappears even in the
divinity itself.

The conflict between Polytheism and Monotheism repre-
sents in the end an opposition of forces in the human mind.
For each'mind by its very nature must notice and appreciate
the variety of the world without and within, and must aim
to bring this world into some kind of system and concord.

286 Psychology of the Religious Life

Yet because of a difference in the intellectual and emotional
temperament of men, one or the other tendency often has
the upper hand. Some revel in the rich variations, the
manifoldness of life, while others are irresistibly impelled
to attend only to its sameness, its order, its essential one-
ness. And this contrast of temper appears in many spheres
having no direct connection with religion — in politics, or
in science. In each of these, progress is a resultant of two
opposing forces present in most individuals or groups of
men, but present in unlike strength — the tendency to
emphasize the plurality, the disconnection, the opposition
of things ; and the tendency to insist first and foremost
on the bond which holds all things together, on their
underlying identity. In politics the tendency to pluralize
or to unify is evident in the desire for separate government
even among kindred, as well as in the genius for empire
which some nations conspicuously display. And within a
single political body we often find varying degrees of
sympathy with a strong central power — those who strive
for a close-knit state, from very love of compactness and
unitary action, ranging themselves against those who are
for giving play to the constituent parts and are for con-
trast and independent power locally and in individuals.
In both cases there is an appreciation of union, but in differ-
ing degrees and with differing sense of the importance of
diversity and of local seats of power.

The same contrast of interests is found also in the world
of science and of philosophy. The scientist must by in-
stinct be a seeker for order and relation ; but in general
he has more feeling for the diversity, for the particulars in
the world, than has the philosopher. But even philosophers
— who give themselves to discovering the relations of all
things to one another, and thus do in a measure feel the
oneness, whatever be their creed — even among these the
relative strength of the two tendencies is perhaps the main
factor which decides whether a man shall be a pluralist or
a monist. The believers in the reality of the Many range

The Motives for Decrease and Unity 287

themselves against the believers in the One, and the clash
of their arms has resounded from the times of Democritus
and Parmenides even unto this day. So the self-same forces
which in religion lead to the variety or the oneness of the
gods, are active in the practical and the speculative life
of the statesman and the metaphysician.

CHAPTER XXI

THE KNOWN AND THE UNKNOWN GOD

BEYOND the contrast as to the number of the gods,
there are strikingly different ways of conceiving the
inner nature of divinity. God may be thought to have
definite character and attributes — as definite as a man
possesses — or he may be regarded as a Being vague and
inconceivable, of which perhaps nothing further can in
truth be said or thought. Let me give instances of this
opposition in representing the divine.

Almost any religion that employs the pictorial or dramatic
way of representing the gods, or in which there is a belief
that the gods may be present bodily to men as divine
animals or divine kings, or may appear sensibly upon some
special occasion — as in the story that Pisistratus was
brought back to power in Athens by Athene herself in
full armour, as the people at the time are said to have
believed l — in all such cases the divinity is given form and
outline both of body and of inner life. Such definite char-
acter may be low ; as in the malicious gods of many savage
tribes. Or it may be inherently weak ; as in those divinities
whose strength depends upon the offerings to them. Sirius,
for example, in his distress declares that if sacrifices had
been offered him in his own name he would have been
given the strength of ten horses, the strength of ten camels,
of ten bulls, of ten mountains, of ten rivers.2 Or the definite
character may be strong and exalted. Ukko, the great

1 Herodotus, I, 60.

a Zend-Avesta, Tir Yast, VI, 24 (XXIII, 100).

288

The Known and the Unknown God 289

god of the Finns, is Father of the heavens, benignant, given
to good counsel ;x he is the creator, and is kind and full of
mercy ;° he knows all things, is wiser than the world-
magicians ;3 from him comes all sweetness, all beauty ;4
he alone can give completion to the work.5

Likewise the character of Ahura Mazda in the Zend-
Avesta is noble without obscurity. He is the creator, the
sustainer ; he is all-conquering, glorious ; he is most
beneficent, the wisest of the wise. He is thus the God of
force, of knowledge, of beauty, and goodwill.6 In the
faith of Islam, too, God appears in fairly clear and intel-
ligible form — though he speaks with none except by special
inspiration or by messenger or from behind a veil.7 He is
merciful, compassionate, forgiving, clement.8 God is " the
mighty, the knowing, the forgiver of sin, the accepter of
repentance, keen at punishment, long-suffering ! there is no
god but He ! to whom the journey is ! "9 And in that
' verse of the throne ' which is among the great portions of
the Koran, the mind is carried far beyond the region of
definite picture, but not beyond the region of definite
thought : " God, there is no God but He, the living, the
self-subsistent. Slumber takes Him not, nor sleep. His is
what is in the heavens and what is in the earth. Who is it
that intercedes with Him save by His permission ? He
knows what is before them and what behind them, and
they comprehend not aught of His knowledge but of what
He pleases. His throne extends over the heavens and the
earth, and it tires Him not to guard them both, for He is
high and grand."10

The religion of the Jewish canon, though at times leaning
toward the indefinite and unknowable God, is in general
of an opposite temper. Jehovah has a positive and in-

1 Kalevala, Rune II (Crawford, p. 25).

2 Ib., Rune VII (Crawford, p. 93). 3 Ib., Rune IX (Crawford, p. 1 18).
4 Ib., Rune IX (Crawford, p. 122). 5 Ib., Rune IX (Crawford, p. 124).

6 Cf. Ormazd Yast, 12-15 (XXIII, 27 f.).

7 Koran, XLII (IX, 210).

8 Ibid., II (VI, 22) ; III (VI, 65), etc.

B Ibid., XL (IX, 190). 1° Ibid., II (VI, 40).

U

290 Psychology of the Religious Life

telligible character. He is interested in his people ; he
blesses them when they keep his law, he shows his anger
when they transgress ; he is jealous, condoning no worship
of gods other than himself. He is merciful and forgiving
when men turn from their evil ways.

Christianity, falling heir to this Jewish faith, retained
and even strengthened the conviction that God had a
nature sharp in outline. He could not only be known to
men, but his character could actually be revealed in human
form, in Jesus Christ. Such as this Man is, with whom you
walk and eat, whose words you hear and whose thought you
understand — such is God himself. His character is the
perfection of human life ; it is nobler than common man's,
but no less distinct and intelligible. This seems to have
been the thought of the Founder, and the Church has with
fair agreement resisted the effort made by many of its
own number to substitute the worship of a formless Infinite,
a God whose true nature was for man quite inconceiv-
able.

Thus in trying to present the belief in a God of definite
nature and intelligible to us, we have already caught
momentarily the opposite view ; and to this we should
now turn undividedly.

And first it would seem as if the best instances of the
Divine regarded as indefinite were found in the recognition
of an Unknown God. The Apostle Paul, in his address to
the Athenians upon Mars Hill, speaks of an altar to such a
divinity ;x and from other sources we know that this was not
a solitary instance with the Greeks. There were altars of
gods called Unknown at the harbour of Phalerum, and an
altar sacred to Unknown Gods at Olympia.2 An explana-
tion of this strange worship of the Greeks is that it provided
for divinities as yet unnamed and unidentified and who,
perhaps, should be placated in times of stress, like that of
plague — somewhat as when an earthquake came, the

1 Acts, XVII, 23. a Pausanias, I, i, 4 ; V, 14, 8.

The Known and the Unknown God 291

Romans, not being sure what divinity had caused the trouble,
proclaimed a holy day, yet left it undecided to whom the
day was holy.1

Very different from this is the faith that has, in a measure,
already identified the God and given him a personal name,
yet feels no clear insight into his mysterious nature. This
baffled recognition, this knowledge both successful and
defeated, seems to have been felt by those Indians of Peru
toward their god Pachacamac — at least after the Incas
had influenced them to worship another god, the Sun.
' When the Indians were asked who Pachacamac was, they
replied that he it was who gave life to the universe, and
supported it ; but that they knew him not, for they had
never seen him, and for this reason they did not build
temples to him, nor offer him sacrifices. But that they
worshipped him in their hearts (that is mentally), and con-
sidered him to be an unknown God."2 The sense of ignorance
of the god is here perhaps due to the decline of a faith at
one time clearer, before the Incas had introduced among
the subject Indians some confusion by a new worship. But
whatever may have been the occasion, there seems to have
been clearly recognized an incomplete acquaintance with
the Divine — as there was elsewhere in native America by a
King of ancient Tezcuco.3

But even more impressive in many ways is the account,
given by men of the Amazulu of South Africa, of the great
gods far away who are not clearly known, and of the spirits
near and definite, to whom prayer is offered : ' Unkulun-
kulu is no longer known. It is he who was the first man ;
he broke off in the beginning. We do not know his wife ;
and the ancients do not tell us that he had a wife."

1 Frazer, in Vol. II of his ed. of Pausanias, 1898, pp. 33 ff.

2 First Part of the Royal Commentaries of the Yncas, by Garcilasso de la
Vega, tr. Markham, 1869, p. 107. That this was not exactly true of all the
believers in Pachacamac is clear, for there was a great temple to him in a
valley of that name " about four leagues from the City of the Kings " — a
temple which the conquering Incas, by a compromise, turned partly into
a temple of th=-ir own god, the Sun. See Travels of Pedro Cieza de Leon, tr.
Markham, 1864, pp. 251 ff.

3 Bancroft : Native Races, 1886, III, 197, and cf. p. 191.

292 Psychology of the Religious Life

" Tell me if at the present time there are any who pray to
Unkulunkulu ? "

" There are none. They pray to the Amatonga ; they
honour them that they may come and save them."

" Who are the Amatonga ? '

" The Amadhlozi, men who have died."

But as for Unkulunkulu, the ' old-old ' one, there was no
evidence that he cared to have men know him, and so he
was unworshipped : " They speak truly who say, he was
not worshipped ; and I agree with them," says the native
narrator ; " For it is not worship when people see things,
as rain, or food, such as corn, and say, ' Yes, these things
were made by Unkulunkulu/ but no such word has come
to them from him as this, ' I have made for you these things
that you might know me by them.' He made them that
men might eat and see them, and nothing more."

But vague and distant as is this old-old One, there is a
' heavenly King ' of whom even less is known — nothing,
save that the thunder is the noise of his play : ' We can
give some account of what belongs to Unkulunkulu ; we can
scarcely give any account of what belongs to the heavenly
king." " We say that Unkulunkulu was first ; we do not
know what belongs to that king. There remained that
word only about the heaven ; we know nothing of his mode
of life, nor of the principles of his government."1

This is, in a simpler way, the same feeling and conviction
that appears at times in the Book of Job :

" Behold, God is great, and we know him not ;

The number of his years is unsearchable."
" Out of the north cometh golden splendour :

God hath upon him terrible majesty.
Touching the Almighty, we cannot find him out." 2

This was felt in ancient Egypt ;3 it is rare and momentary

1 Callaway : Religious System of the Amazulu, 1870, pp. i, 8, 17, 20.

2 XXXVI, 26 ; XXXVII, 22 f.

r 3 Book of the Dead( XLII, 21 ff. ; LXII, 18 flf. ; LXXIX ; CX, 14,
etc."; _and see the Papyrus of Nesi-Khonsu.

The Known and the Unknown God 293

also in the Koran, and felt perhaps by some poet of the
Vedas1 — perhaps also by some groping penitent in ancient
Babylonia.2

This baffling of intelligence which the religious mind so
often feels, and which at first might seem the complete and
perfect illustration of Indefiniteness in worship, is in truth
more often a compromise between the vague and the
definite. For in so far as purpose and thought are attributed
to divinity, the Divine in some measure appears clear in
outline if not in all detail, since from their own experience
men know what it means to have thought and purpose, and
these give at once a certain kinship to our nature. Yet in
so far as God's ways are declared to be not our ways, and
his thoughts not ours, and indeed past finding out, divinity,
while preserving its definiteness of 'form,' loses all 'material'
definiteness — if a scholastic distinction may be employed.

Only in the higher and more reflective faiths, especially
of the Orient, do we observe, unchecked and reaching its
goal, the impulse to conceive of an absolutely indefinite
divinity. In the instances so far seen, man's ignorance of
God has been silently attributed to some aloofness, some
separation, due perhaps to human disobedience ; man
knows not the Divine because of some obstacle or distance
which cuts off opportunity for acquaintance. The deity is
still felt to possess definite character and to be knowable,
were mere circumstances somewhat changed. The further
and extreme movement of faith is when the difficulty is felt
to lie, not in circumstance, but in the very nature of the
Divine. And this becomes not only unknown but essen-
tially unknowable. God now is regarded as the Being
indescribable, escaping all the limit and restraint which
imagination or thought imposes on its object.

1 Vedic Hymns, X, 121, at least according to Miiller's understanding
of it (XXXII, i ff.), with which others do not agree ; cf. Ludwig : Der
Rigveda, 1876-83, II, 575 ff., and Wilson: Rig-Veda Sanhita, 1888, VI,

335 ff-

2 Zimmern : Babylonische Busspsalmen, 1885, pp. 61 ff. The statement
above is put with caution because the ' agnostic ' element does not appear
in Sayce's translation of this psalm, Records of the Past, VII, 153 f.

294 Psychology of the Religious Life

Since they speak perhaps more as philosophers than as
leaders and representatives of religion, we may pass with
a bare mention men like Plotinus, who hold that the One is
not to be spoken of as that which ' is/ nor as ' the good ' ;
since it is incomprehensible, is that to which in strict truth
no predicate can apply.1 Yet philosophical expressions like
these are representative in this sense, that the same spirit
is present also in clear religion — as in much of the sacred
literature of India. Brahma is described in the Bhagavadgita
as without beginning or end, as neither existent nor non-
existent, as possessed of the qualities of the senses, yet
without senses. Yet Brahma has ears on all sides ; heads,
faces, on all sides. Brahma is devoid of all qualities, is
within all things and yet without them, is movable and im-
movable, is unknowable through its subtlety, is far and
near.2 Thus no sooner is anything said of Brahma than
it is denied ; and whatever is denied is at once affirmed.
Opposite is set upon opposite ; and in the resultant con-
fusion the mind finds no place to rest.

An equal blur of outline is in the description, in the same
book, of the deity now called Krishna : " I am the pro-
ducer and destroyer of the whole universe. There is nothing
else, O Dhanangaya ! higher than myself ; all this is
woven upon me, like numbers of pearls upon a thread. I
am the taste in water, O son of Kunti ! I am the light of
the sun and moon. I am ' Om ' in all the Vedas, sound in
space, and manliness in human beings ; I am the fragrant
smell in the earth, refulgence in the fire ; I am life in all
beings, and penance in those who perform penance. Know
me, O Son of Pn'tha ! to be the eternal seed of all beings ;
I am the discernment of the discerning ones, and I the
glory of the glorious. I am also the strength, unaccom-
panied by fondness or desire, of the strong. And, O chief
of the descendants of Bharata ! I am love unopposed to
piety among all beings. And all entities which are of the

1 Plotinus, Enneades, VI, 7, 38 ; VI, 9, 5.
[,« Bhagavadgita, XIII (VIII, 103 f.).

The Known and the Unknown God 295

quality of goodness, and those that are of the quality of
passion and of darkness, know that they are, indeed, all
from me ; I am not in them, but they are all in me."
Even the delusion which hides all this truth from men is
Krishna's, is divine.1 Here, as for another Indian mystic,
the universal Being may be excluded from nothing ; it
must taste not Truth alone, but also Error :

' ' Zu schmecken Wahrheit und Tauschung,
Ward zweiheitlich das grosse Selbst."2

But to continue our main account and feel more^fully
the want of outline. All things are but the Deity in his
many forms. The God declares : ' I am the argument of
controversialists." " I myself am time inexhaustible, and
I the creator whose faces are in all directions. I am death
who seizes all, and the source of what is to be." " Of
cheats, I am the game of dice." ' I am the goodness of
the good."3 "I am the sacred verse. I, too, am the sacri-
ficial butter, and I the fire, I the offering. I am the father
of this universe, the mother, the creator ; the grandsire,
the thing to be known, the means of sanctification, the
syllable Om," the sacred scripture, " the goal, the sus-
tainer, the lord, the supervisor, the residence, the asylum,
the friend, the source, and that in which it merges, the
support, the receptacle, and the inexhaustible seed. I
cause heat and I send forth and stop showers. I am im-
mortality and also death ; and I, O Arguna ! am that
which is and that which is not."4 Here the divinity loses
character by the very multitude of things with which he is
identified. He is truth and he is delusion ; he is the
prayer of the worshipper, the sin of the sinner ; he is all
that exists on earth and ah1 that exists in heaven ; he is
even what is and what is not ! Let this suffice to illustrate
the conception of God without form and void, even by
reason of his all-inclusiveness.

1 Bhagavadgita, VII (VIII, 74 f.).

2 Maitrayana Upanishad, VII, u, 8, Deussen's tr., Sechsig Upan.,

1897, P- 370.

3 Bhagavadgita, X (VIII, 90 f.). •- Ibid., IX (VIII, 83 f.).

296 Psychology of the Religious Life

We have thus the competing tendencies before us, and
should now attend to the motives which control them. But
these motives are so intimately joined with those which lie
behind the conceptions to be described a little later that
the desire to avoid tiresome repetition urges a delay of
the discussion until then. Nor should one omit to say
that many of the causes that lead to the distinction
between the definite and the characterless God are exactly
those which help to divide the monotheist from the poly-
theist.

In believing that God has a definite character, the thought
is animated by some of the better spirit in the older poly-
theism. The concrete good seen in a purified human society
is still retained in the belief in a God of character, as in the
belief in many Gods. But there is this difference : that
instead of divinity existing as it does for the polytheist,
in a society of gods as well as men, the only associates of the
God of definite character are men and man-like spirits. The
patterns of actual life, where there is purpose limited by set
conditions, where there is a willingness to have comradeship
even with some thwarting and loss of absolute sway, are
appreciated and copied. The pattern of human life which
polytheism accepts naively is now no longer slavishly
followed ; it is idealized ; but its subtle essence is still
preserved. The love of variety and real opposition here
enjoys its rights. For the Unity of God is prevented from
going to an extreme, by the feeling that there are also
realities distinct from him — namely, nature and men. His
personality is limited and defined by their existence. There
is thus a feeling for personality, for the individual set over
against other individuals, a social ideal where subjects have
rights and freedom, as against the despotic ideal where the
monarch is all and in all, and can say, L'etat, c'est moi.
It seems hardly a matter of chance that Christianity, pushing
on among peoples most interested in the rights of persons as
separate and distinct individuals, has with all its high
development been willing to carry the Unity of God to no

The Knoivn and the Unknown God 297

such extreme that nature and men are completely blurred
and lost in the One Existence.

In those for whom the Ideal has become characterless,
the causes which work toward unity have brushed aside
and swept over all opposing forces. The God of the mono-
theist is a jealous God ; he will brook no rival. And this
jealousy in him is in part but a reflection of the jealousy
for his glory and honour which his adorer feels. But why
stop with the thought that there are no other gods than he ?
To express as reasoning what in the main is not reasoned
at all, but is a matter of feeling or impulse — If God is really
divine, why should he have a rival of any kind whatever ?
His supremacy in beauty and wisdom and power must not
only make him more beautiful and wise and powerful than all
besides, his must be the only beauty, the only wisdom, the
only power. Whatsoever things seem to have these qualities
must either be illusions or else parts of the Divine Being
himself. All operations, whether in the physical world or
in the mental, are his operations ; there is nothing that has
life and power but he. But not alone what is fair and good
must be brought within the circle of divinity. Existence of
every kind, whether it be good or ill, true or false, must be
included in his nature. And in the final intoxication of
thought and feeling, even the non-existent is declared to be
of him ! " I, O Arguna ! am that which is and that which
is not." The movement toward unity which in Monotheism
is checked when the gods are brought to oneness, here goes
on and on. Man and Nature and God must be, not simply
organized into an harmonious order with God as maker
and ruler and the goal of all desire, but so compacted that
nothing has reality but the One.

But the Unity, the rivalless existence of the One, which
is here attained by bringing everything in, may also be
attained by shutting everything out. The divinity who is
identified with all things whatever — with stones and clouds,
fire and water, truth and error, saints and sinners, men and
gods, with that which is and that which is not — is, after all,

298 Psychology of the Religious Life

a strange unity. It is one that has endless contrast and
opposition within it. It is a harmony made up of discords.
Many a soul that would^have his God a harmonious One,
nevertheless feels that anything is more divine than har-
mony such as has just been described ; and so God comes
to be conceived in the very opposite way. " Let us at any
cost have his inner nature at peace," we might imagine
such a one saying ; " And since qualities and attributes
always go by pairs, and suggest contrast and discord and
multiplicity — since ' existence ' suggests ' non-existence,'
' strength ' ' weakness/ and ' goodness ' ' evil ' — while yet
God's inner unity is perfect, is there any way to conceive
this inner perfection except by denying it all specific attri-
butes ? His nature, to be harmonious, must be beyond all
quality. He is that One of whom nothing can be affirmed."
This is something of the spirit in which Lao-tze seeks to con-
ceive the peace and unity of the Divine Mystery. " We
look at it, and we do not see it, and we name it ' the Equable.'
We listen to it, and we do not hear it, and we name it ' the
Inaudible/ We try to grasp it, and we do not get hold of
it, and we name it ' the Subtle.' With these three qualities,
it cannot be made the subject of description : and hence
we blend them together and obtain The One."

' Its upper part is not bright, and its lower part is not
obscure. Ceaseless in its action, it yet cannot be named,
and then it again returns and becomes nothing. This is
called the Form of the Formless, and the Semblance of the
Invisible ; this is called the Fleeting and the Indeter-
minable." * Where Brahma and Krishna, in the passages
quoted some pages back, are described by endless affirma-
tions, the Supreme for the Chinese mystic is described
mainly by denial on denial. To the logician the difference
between these two methods may not seem important ; but
for the student of psychology the difference is great. The
worshipper in one case feels the closeness of divinity to the
very things at hand, they are the divinity in some of its

1 Tao Teh King, I, 14 (XXXIX, 57).

The Known and the Unknown God 299

many forms. God is felt to flow around and through one's
very being, and the separateness of one's self is lost in the
sense of the nearness, the enfolding presence of the One.
The other type feels most of all the refinement, the subtlety
of the Divine, the infinite contrast between it and all things
that can be seen or inwardly experienced. The Absolute
is that which is different from all things ; it is that which is
ever just beyond our thought. Each of these Unities, at-
tained in ways so much alike and yet so opposite, is thus
markedly different from the other, and together they
illustrate the extremes to which the desire for unity may
lead. But they also lead beyond themselves, to an opposi-
tion, in connection with which they may be better discussed
and understood ; and to this opposition we should now pass.
But of the present opposition itself, it is perhaps clear
that in the conceptions of divinity which in their late coming
take deep and wide hold of human nature, both conscious
ignorance and knowledge are in union — God is at once both
known and beyond knowledge, is both definite and obscure.
It is with him as with all great instances of personality ;
there is distance beyond distance, and no one can search it
out ; and yet a broad plan and mode of action in such per-
sonality may seem to us clear. In the desire to avoid
mystery, or unconscious of it, some make God all known
and within reach ; while others feel only his inscrutableness.
But happily these extremes are less common, and the mind
as a rule responds with more balance, and reveres a God
that is at once known and unknown.

CHAPTER XXII

DIVINITY AT HAND, AND AFAR OFF

THE human race has moved, almost as if bewildered,
between the alternatives of a God who comes close to
man, who knows and sympathizes with our human lot, and
a God dwelling apart and beyond all intercourse with men.
And in a way, this contrast has already been evident in
speaking of God as known and as unknown. But the
relation of the divinity to human knowledge is by no means
the same as its relation to human sympathy (though often
the two are most closely connected) , and the God who seems
vague and unknown to our intelligence need not be remote
and unapproachable for feeling. For this reason the differ-
ences of distance between man and God have not yet been
fully told.

Among many savage tribes there is a belief in two kinds
of gods — those that are intimately concerned with man's
affairs, and those that are remote from men, both in locality
and in interest. There are gods near and liable to injure
if not propitiated, or near and friendly, and who protect
men from the distant evil ; and there are other gods who
are believed to exist, but who are not in touch with men,
either for good or ill. A systematic account would clearly
distinguish between mere physical or spatial separation, and
that more serious gulf which comes of want of sympathy ;
but I shall let the two appear together, though more
attention will be given to the want of interest and sympathy.
I shall, however, try to keep distinct some of the sur-
prisingly variable forms in which this contrast is expressed.

300

Divinity at Hand, and Afar Off 30 1

The difference of spiritual relation just spoken of has long
been recognized by those familiar with African belief.
The Abbe Proyart, over a century ago, found there the ac-
knowledgment of a Supreme Being called Zambi, who loved
justice and created all that is good. He, the natives felt,
could be relied upon always to be favourable, and no especial
attention need be paid him. So all their efforts went to
appeasing the god of wickedness — Zambi-a-n'bi — who,
delighting in disorder and evil, counselled injustice and
crime, and caused injury and accident, disease and death.1

But we have other pictures in which the constant favour
of the god seems less assured. " The prevailing notion seems
to be," says Wilson, more particularly of Northern Guinea,
' that God, after having made the world and filled it with
inhabitants, retired to some remote corner of the universe,
and has allowed the affairs of the world to come under
the control of evil spirits ; and hence the only religious
worship that is ever performed is directed to these spirits." 2
And by another writer we are told : " The god, in the sense
we use the word, is in essence the same in all of the Bantu
tribes I have met with on the Coast : a non-interfering and
therefore a negligible quantity. . . . They regard their god
as the creator of man, plants, animals, and the earth, and
they hold that having made them, he takes no further
interest in the affair. But not so the crowd of spirits
with which the universe is peopled, they take only too much
interest, and the Bantu wishes they would not, and is
perpetually saying so in his prayers, a large percentage
whereof amounts to ' Go away, we don't want you.' And
again, we are told by the same writer : " No trace of sun-
worship have I ever found. The firmament is, I believe, al-
ways the great indifferent and neglected god, the Nyan
Kupon of the Tschwi, and the Anzambe, Nzam, etc., of the
Bantu races. The African thinks this god has great power

1 " History of Loango, Kakongo," etc., in Pinkerton's Voyages, 1814,
XVI, 594.

2 Western Africa, 1856, p. 209.

3<D2 Psychology of the Religious Life

if he would only exert it, and when things go very badly
with him, when the river rises higher than usual and sweeps
away his home and his plantations ; when the smallpox
stalks through the land, and day and night the corpses
float down the river past him, and he finds them jammed
among his canoes that are tied to the beach, and choking
up his fish traps ; and then when at last the death-wail
over its victims goes up night and day from his own village,
he will rise up and call upon this great god in the terror
maddened by despair, that he may hear and restrain the
evil workings of these lesser devils."1

But the idea that the Greatest is remote in place or in
sympathy is found also among the natives of America. The
Great Spirit of the Indians is at times regarded as a being
who, after making the world, has left its actual government
and the control of men's affairs to inferior and antagonistic
spirits.2 And among the Tuelches of Patagonia there is
the belief in a good Spirit, but he is thought to live careless
of mankind. The malicious spirits, however, and especially
the chief demon of them, are active and eager to do men
harm.3 The state of belief here is not unlike that found in
Borneo, where the natives of the valley of Barito hold that
the air is filled with countless spirits called hantoes, which
watch over and seek to defend every object in the land, and
to bring sickness and misfortune upon men. So these spirits
and the powerful angels — sangsangs — must be appeased ;
while the supreme God, the fountain of all good, is neglected.4

It is strange, but significant, perhaps, of the mind's
suspicion of its own character and situation, that in most
instances the far-away spirit is good, while the spirits near by
are bent on evil. But occasionally the reverse is true.
In Australia, where the feeling seems to be exceedingly
rare that spirits actually help or injure men, the Binbinga

1 Kingsley : Travels in West Africa, 1897, pp. 442 f., 508.

2 Schoolcraft : Archives of Aborig. Knowl., 1860, I, 37.

* Musters : At Home with the Patagonians, 1871, pp. 179 f.
4 Frazer : Golden Bough, 1900, III, 47 f., and cf. p. 51, etc., and Tylor :
Primitive Culture, 1903, II, 337, 341, 348, etc., for other striking examples.

Divinity at Hand, and Afar Off 303

tribe, nevertheless, believe that the sky is inhabited by two
spirits ill-disposed toward men — spirits called Mundagadji,
covered with white down, and having knives in place of
arms. Their evil designs are constantly being frustrated
by a friendly spirit, Ulurkura, living less distant, in the
woods, and ever on the watch to stop these hostile spirits of
the sky. And the Mara tribe have a belief similar in almost
all respects, save in the names of the hostile and friendly
beings.1

In Ashantee, however, there is still another variant from
the commoner view, in that the heights of good and evil
are both far distant. For not only is the god who created all
and is omniscient conceived of as withdrawn from the world,
leaving this to take its own course under the rule of sub-
ordinate powers ; but also the highest of evil spirits, the
Enemy of men, is thought to live apart in some vague and
far Beyond.2

And for the last of the variations on this theme, as found
in lower races, the belief should be mentioned in which the
god now distant was intimate with men in earlier days. It is
one of the popular legends of Aquapim, lying back from the
African Gold Coast, that heaven once was nearer men than it
now is ; the supreme God and Creator himself then gave
men instruction in deepest wisdom ; but later he withdrew
from them, and now dwells far away in Heaven.3 And
from another source the same belief appears widespread in
Africa that God once was near, but now is far away : ' In
connection with the gods of West Africa," Miss Kingsley
tells us, " I may remark that in almost all the series of native
tradition there, you will find accounts of a time when there
was direct intercourse between the gods or spirits that live
in the sky and men. That intercourse is always said to have
been cut off by some human error ; for example, the
Fernando Po people say that once upon a time there was
no trouble or serious disturbance upon earth because there

1 Spencer and Gillen : Northern Tribes of Central Australia, 1904,
pp. 501 f.

2 Waitz : Anthropologie, II, 171. 3 Ibid., II, 171.

304 Psychology of the Religious Life

was a ladder, made like the one you get palm-nuts with,
' only long, long ' ; and this ladder reached from earth to
heaven, so the gods could go up and down it and attend
personally to mundane affairs. But one day a cripple boy
started to go up the ladder, and he had got a long way up
when his mother saw him and went up in pursuit. The
gods, horrified at the prospect of having boys and women
invading heaven, threw down the ladder, and have since
left humanity severely alone." The people of Timneh, north-
east of Sierra Leone, though possibly the Arabs have in-
fluenced the form in which the legend runs, have a similar
belief that in olden times God was friendly with men ; but
later, by man's disobedience, he was forced to act with
sternness.1 It is like the Greek belief that men of the
ancient time, by reason of their righteousness, were intimate
with the gods, and sat and feasted with them2 — part of that
persistent vision, appearing to so many people, of a golden
age in the past, when heaven was close to earth, and plenty
and virtue were over all. >'•••!

Thus the difference in the nearness of spiritual powers to
men need not be illustrated solely from savage thought. It
is seen in varying forms almost universally. Some of the
gods of Greece stood on quite a different footing from that
of others ; at Athens, the goddess Athene seems to have
come closer and been practically more significant than Zeus,
the more powerful and august divinity. And in Greece there
was, too, an active worship of the ancient god Kronos,3
although, according to myth, he had long ago been defeated
by Zeus and chained in gloomy Tartarus. In Babylonia,
the great god Marduk had behind him older gods to whom
less reverence was paid. And the same is true of the religion
of Egypt, where Ra, the chief of the gods, was seen against
a background of vague and more distant divine powers
from which he had sprung.

In many of these cases we have two conceptions of

1 Kingsley : Travels in West Africa, 1897, pp. 507 f.

2 See, e.g., Pausanias, VIII, 2, 4.

3 Farnell : The Cults of the Greek States, 1896-1907, I, 27 f.

Divinity at Hand, and Afar Off 305

divinity, peaceably dwelling together in the same person's
mind, some of the gods belonging to one type, while others
are of different nature. But again, the religious impulse,
throwing all logical consistency to the winds, may entertain
in succession conflicting notions of the same divinity. In
the wonderful dialogue between the disguised god Krishna
and his charioteer Arguna, the god declares that he cares
naught for men. " I am alike to all beings," he says, " to
me none is hateful, none dear." * The spirit of piety can thus,
in one of its moods, describe divinity in words that might
almost as well have come from the lips of some cynic. But
again, there is in this same dialogue a divine interest in men.
" Out of compassion for them," the god destroys, " with the
brilliant lamp of knowledge, the darkness within them,
born of ignorance."2 The conflicting emotions of attraction
and awful distance are also shown where Arguna prays for-
giveness for having called the deity his friend, or for thinking
of him as a friend, and not knowing his greatness who is
indefinable. But almost at the next instant he cries to God :
" Be pleased, O God ! to pardon me, as a father pardons his
son, or a friend his friend, or a husband his beloved." 3
This but makes clearer the close connection of these two
motives in the Ideal, that to the same god in this case such
opposite traits can be ascribed, or toward him such con-
trasting feelings can be felt in rapid alternation.

Yet such an alternation does not always come ; but the
conviction is fixed upon only one of these alternatives,
and the other is for all time put away. Thus the Jains of
India believe that the Supreme Being " has nothing in
common with the things of this world, and does not interfere
at all in the government of this vast universe. Virtue and
vice, good and evil, are indifferent to him." He rewards no
man for good or evil, but remains aloof, absorbed in the
contemplation of his own perfections, enjoying the bliss of

1 Bhagavadgita, IX (VIII, 85). 2 Ibid., X (VIII, 87).

3 Ibid., XI (VIII, 97), with alteration of the translator's extra-textual
words.

306 Psychology of the Religious Life

his own complete existence.1 And in the ancient Imperial
Religion of China the Supreme Power has neither love nor
hatred toward individuals — a conception of the Divine
held also by Lao-tze, who says that to Heaven and Earth,
as to the Sages, all things are alike ; there is no real
benevolence upon high, and men and all things are dealt
with " as the dogs of grass are dealt with " — used and
thrown aside.2

So far our attention has been upon the many forms and
degrees of the belief that the divine is far separate from
the human. Only in a minor way and as an incident has the
nearness of God and man been illustrated ; and to this
some fuller heed should now be paid.

The expression of the feeling of a closer bond, like that
of its opposite, assumes many different forms. And as
the first of these there might be taken the belief that some
god is the great ancestor of men — as Unkulunkulu of the
Zulus ; 3 or Tii or Taaroa of the Tahitians ; 4 or Maui of
the New Zealanders ; 5 or He-no, god of Thunder, Rain,
and Cloud, of whom the Iroquois called themselves the
grandchildren.6 This feeling is also found in those men of
Ashantee for whom God had, besides the name ' my Maker/
another name, ' my Great Friend.' 7 Something of the
same bond is expressed in another way when, in creating
man, the divinity is pictured as putting into him a part of
his own being. In Genesis Adam's soul is the breath of
God himself, and in the Chaldean account of creation the
god Bel cuts off his own head, and from his blood mixed
with earth the gods make mankind, who for this reason
are intelligent and partake of the divine knowledge.8 And

1 Dubois : Hindu Manners, tr. Beauchamp, 1897, Appendix I, p. 697.

2 Tao Teh A'ing, I, 5, i (XXXIX, 50) ; de la Saussaye : Manual,
Engl. tr., 1891, p. 346.

3 Callaway : Religious System of the Amazulu, 1870, Pt. I.

4 Ellis : Polynesian Researches, 1831, I, in ; cf. I, 323.

5 Schirren : Die Wandersagen der Neuseeldnder, 1856, p. 64.

6 Morgan : League of the Iroquois, 1851, p. 159.

7 Wilson : Western Africa, 1856, p. 209, note.

8 Smith : Chaldean Account of Genesis, 1876, p. 42.

Divinity at Hand, and Afar Off 307

all those widespread stories of the intercourse between
heaven and earth, many of them gross and many beautiful —
the gods appearing and speaking with men, or coming for a
longer time in human form to dwell on earth — these testify
to a feeling of the nearness of the divine to the human,
in interest as well as in character. The very marks of the
relationship are often borne upon the body. The savage is
tattooed with the sign of the spirit or god to whom he belongs
or which bears some special relationship to him. The
priests of Isis in some cases seem to have carried the mark
of divinity upon their forehead.1 Those who, in the Book
of Revelation, were marked upon their foreheads or their
hands ; or those in the middle ages who were miraculously
favoured to bear the stigmata of the crucified Lord, are but
scattered illustrations of the belief that the supernatural
power does in some visible way mark those who are chosen
and are especially near.

I Or the closeness of the connection may be expressed as an
actual dependence of the gods upon the kind offices of men —
a doctrine which in Buddhism appears at times in the
thought that the Prince Gotama is even the Teacher of the
gods. In the earlier Indian religion, that of the Vedas,
while there is much prayer for blessings upon the wor-
shippers, yet there is also the thought that the prayer and
sacrifice are of benefit to the gods. " This prayer from us
is acceptable to you," says the worshipper to his divinities,
" like the springs of heaven to a thirsty soul longing for
water." 2 The strength of the gods rises with the offerings
to them.3 The hymns give strength and beauty to Agni,
the devouring flame.4 And the same thought is in the
Zend-Avesta. Strength increases to the gods many fold
when sacrifice is offered them.5

1 Dennison : "A New Head of the So-called Scipio Type," Amer.
Journ. of Archceol., sec. series, IX (1905), 1 1 fi.

2 Vedic Hymns, V, 57, i (XXXII, 340).

3 Ibid., I, 165, 4 (XXXII, 179).

4 Ibid.. II. 8, 5 (XLVI, 213) ; cf. Ill, 5, 2 (XLVI, 240).

5 Tir Yast, 24 (XXIII, 100).

308 Psychology of the Religious Life

But there is a dependence less physical and more spiritual
where a longing for religious intercourse is felt to exist, even
in divinity. The Goddess of the Heavenly Spring, from
which all earthly waters flow, Ardvi Sura Anahita, drives
forward on her chariot, " longing for men, and thinking thus
in her heart : ' Who will praise me ? Who will offer me
a sacrifice, with libations cleanly prepared and well-strained,
together with the Haoma and meat ? To whom shall I
cleave, who cleaves unto me, and thinks with me, and
bestows gifts upon me, and is of goodwill unto me ? ' ' 1

The Hebrew Scriptures, though not forgetful of the un-
searchable heights of the divine nature, represent in many
ways — in history, as in the Book of Joshua or of Chronicles ;
in drama, as in the Book of Job ; in prayers and sacred
hymns, such as the Psalms ; in rebuke and exhortation, by
the Prophets — God's interest in his chosen people. He
watches their every action ; he gives them laws to govern
their private and public life ; he rules them through his
representatives ; he punishes them by the hands of their
enemies ; he delivers them from bondage and oppression.
Men live only to serve the Lord ; but Heaven itself often
seems to exist but to guide man toward the divine ideal.
Though he demands much, he also gives much. Thus God
is near to earth. He is man's place of refuge, his fortress,
he covers man with his pinions, he is a habitation where
no evil comes.2 He leads his people like a shepherd, he
carries the young lambs in his bosom, and gently leads those
that are with young.3 And after sin, the repentant may
turn to God with the hope of forgiveness, even as in ancient
Babylonia the heart burdened with sin appealed to God
in penitential psalms.4

With the later Arabs, as we find their faith reflected in
the Koran, there was insistence both on the greatness of

1 Aban Yast, II, n (XXIII, 56).
8 Psalm XCI. 3 Isaiah, XL, n.

4 Zimmern : Babylonische Busspsalmen, 1885 ; and cf. Sayce : Records
of the Past, VII, 153 f.

Divinity at Hand, and Afar Off 309

God, which lifted him high above humanity, and on his
nearness to those who were submissive. His sublimity is not
to be carelessly set aside by human confidence : ' The Jews
and the Christians say, ' We are the sons of God and his
beloved.' " Say to them — the spirit charges the Prophet—
" ' Why, then, does he punish you for your sins ? Nay, ye
are mortals of those whom he has created ! He pardons
whom he pleases, and punishes whom he pleases, for God's
is the kingdom of the heavens and the earth, and what is
between the two, and unto him the journey is."1 Yet
for all his unsearchable greatness, or perhaps because of
this, he enters, by his knowledge, into everything that man
thinks or does : " We created man, and we know what
his soul whispers ; for we are nigher to him than his jugular
vein ! " 2 "Dost thou not see that God knows what is in
the heavens, and what is in the earth ? and that there
cannot be a privy discourse of three but he makes the
fourth ? nor five but he makes the sixth ? nor less than that
nor more, but that he is with them wheresoe'er they be ? " 3
But this God that pervades all and knows the greatest and
the least, is also moved by man's appeal, and grants what
the faithful soul requires. He declares to the Prophet :
" When my servants ask thee concerning me, then, verily I
am near; I answer the prayer's prayer whene'er he prays to
me. So let them ask me for an answer, and let them believe
in me ; haply they may be directed aright." 4

When we pass to the religion of the New Testament,
we find the nearness and love of God to man reasserted in
gentler form and made the central thought. Jesus is
filled with a desire to heal men in body and mind ; he
sympathizes with affliction, he sympathizes no less with
kindly pleasure. And he declares that the life he lives
among men is a faithful picture of God's ways. God desires
human fellowship ; he wishes to sup with men. As a
father he is waiting for the return of the petulant boy who

1 Koran, V (VI, 100). - Ibid., L (IX, 242 1).

3 Ibid., LVIII (IX, 271). * Ibid., II (VI, 26).]

310 Psychology of the Religious Life

has left the family roof ; and the son is returning to the
home that opens wide in welcome. And in the death
of Christ, his followers saw a supreme expression of the
longing of the very God for a closer bond with men. The
Crucifixion was felt to typify the destruction of all that
stood between heaven and earth ; for since God had borne
in his own person the fullness of human sorrow to reveal his
love, men could no longer feel him to be untouched by any-
thing that affected human life. There is thus established
an unfailing sympathy and understanding between the
worshipper and the God he worships.

But religion shows this trait, curious but not unparalleled,
that even within one of its strongly differentiated types
the old contrasts reappear. Christianity is a pronounced
expression of the faith that the Divinity, in act, in thought,
in affection, in very nature, is near unto him who worships.
Yet within a religion standing for this idea, the conflict
which seemed to have ended breaks out afresh. On the
one side were those who would remain true to the faith that
the divine nature and the human are not of different mould
but that the divine is the ideal and perfection of humanity.
And against them were those who, while still Christians, felt
the drawing of the opposite type of belief — that a divine
life must of necessity be irreconcilable with man's, and that
the divine nature can in no real way be united with the
human.

The conflict had its intellectual expression in debates
over the character of Jesus Christ, with arguments to show
that he could not have been human, and arguments to show
that he could not have been divine, and finally arguments
to show that in him there was at once a real union of the
human with the divine. Those for whom nothing is more
abhorrent than the controversies of theology, have felt
this to be mere dust and noise. But behind it is the vital
question whether the human and the divine are of necessity
different in kind, whether there is, after all, some impassable
gulf between God and man, so that they can never really

Divinity at Hand, and Afar Off 311

meet, however great may be the desire for such a meeting.
Those who denied the real union of humanity and divinity
in Christ were, consciously or unconsciously, fighting for the
principle of separation between the two orders of life ; they
stood for the unchristian doctrine of a God afar off ; their
position was, therefore, pronounced to be heresy, and the
Church maintained the doctrine that in Christ Jesus there
was a mysterious conjunction of very man and very God.
It was a battle not of mere logic and metaphysics, for
behind the subtle disputes were two very real and practical
alternatives of religious life between which it was well that
a choice should be made.

And yet, such is the mental insistence of the rejected
belief, that in another respect even the main body of
Christians have shown signs of compromise with an ideal
not their own. Wherever we find insistence on personal
mediation between God and man, it is a sign that the
distance is felt to be too great for intercourse direct. It is
difficult to avoid the impression of trespass here upon
what is more properly of theology. But if it be permitted
to speak from a psychological interest only, we might
say that as an integral member of the Trinity the mediation
of Christ between man and the Father perhaps provides
for the desire within men, both to maintain and to annul
the work of intercession. For the common idea of mediation,
while in a sense preserved, is yet deeply altered, since now
it is God himself in one of his own divine ' persons,' and not
another, who bridges the chasm between divine and human.
And yet in their common daily feeling the plain members
of the Church have unmistakably yielded to the impulse
to reaffirm the distance and the separation. If not in the
decrees of councils, yet in the habitual ideas of many of the
Church, ' the Father ' is regarded as the true God between
whom and man a less awful and more lovable Being acts
as mediator. The same motive, going to greater lengths,
makes even Christ too exalted to be approached directly :
between him and man there is need of an intercessor, the

312 Psychology of the Religious Life

Virgin Mother ; while the process, ever repeated, calls for
patron saint and earthly priest, before communication
between heaven and earth is re-established.

Mediation between man and the supreme God is not
peculiar to Christian thought ; it springs from the very nature
of the religious life in its higher if not its highest forms.
And it is difficult to escape, even when the mind steadfastly
resists the thought. Mohammed is like steel against all
intercession ; God must stand alone, without sons or
daughters or any ' associates/ and none may come between
him and man. " Do they," who are not of Islam — perhaps
the Christians especially are in mind — " Do they take besides
God intercessors ? . . . God's is the intercession, all of it ;
His is the kingdom of the heavens and the earth." * Yet
we are told " The angels celebrate the praises of their Lord,
and ask forgiveness for those who are on the earth." 2
And even the Prophet himself does not receive the words of
the Koran directly from Allah himself, but from the angel
Gabriel by divine permission.3

And where the Arabic influence is present, though
weakened, the thought of intercession, somewhat sup-
pressed in Islam, may appear in fullest strength. In the
Yoruba country in Africa, it is said that no man can directly
approach God ; but the Almighty has appointed orisas,
who are mediators, or intercessors, between himself and
humanity — beings much like men, and pleased by offerings
of sheep, pigeons, and other things, whereby they become
conciliated and bless men through the power of God.4
Vague suggestions, coming from instances of far-off men of
power, reinforced by some inner sense of the uncontrolled
and inscrutable might of nature — the sense of insufficiency
before the mysteries of life — this supports and creates the
belief that the Highest is reached only through others, and
only through others gives his messages to men. " In the

1 Koran, XXXIX (IX, 186).

2 Ibid., XLII (IX, 205). 3 Cf., e.g., Ibid., II, (VI, 13).

4 Bowen : " Yoruba Language," etc., Introd, p. xvi, in Smithsonian
Contributions to KnowL, Vol. X, 1858.

Divinity at Hand, and Afar Off 313

beginning of all things, wisdom and knowledge were with
the animals," says a recent Indian account ; ' for Tirawa,
the One Above, did not speak directly to man. He sent
certain animals to tell men that he showed himself through
the beasts, and that from them and from the stars and
the sun and moon should man learn. . . . He never spoke
to man himself, but gave his command to beast or bird,
and this one came to some chosen man and taught him
holy things."1

Somewhat softened in its mediation, but with a vein of
feeling similar to this, the Homeric legends describe Zeus
as communicating regularly, if not universally, with men
through lower divinities, through divine messengers, like
Hermes or Iris, or through no less living dream-forms. But
it is in keeping with the Greek temper, not overburdened
with a sense of human worthlessness, that to the Homeric
Zeus man may pray direct without first appealing to some
lesser god, indeed without even the mediation of a priest.
In the Confucian religion, only the Emperor, the Son of
Heaven, may perform sacrifices to Heaven and Earth.2
So lofty a function, it would appear, was not befitting one
of lower rank. Indeed, the priestly office, almost universal
in religion, early came to be an expression of the need of an
intermediary between man and the gods, the need of some
special representative who possessed the secret knowledge,
as of a magician, or who had the privilege or power of ap-
pearing before Heaven, as an advocate might come before
a Judge, or a courtier plead in one's behalf before his King.

In the Rig- Veda this intermediation is at times more
highly developed. There is here a special poet-priesthood
who know the ceremonial, and who by gifts — often of
princely worth3 — can be induced to offer prayer and sacrifice.
But the priest in his turn appeals at times only indirectly
to the highest gods ; he approaches them only through

1 Indians' Book, ed. Curtis, 1907, p. 96.

2 Li Ki, VII, 2, i (XXVII, 373), and elsewhere.

3 Cf. Vedic Hymns, V, 27 (XLVI, 420).

314 Psychology of the Religious Life

another. Agni, the lowly, born on earth as well as in
heaven, Agni, the homely yet heavenly god of fire, the
friend and guest of all men, bears the sacrifice to the gods.
To Agni is the prayer that he will intercede with Varuna,
with the eldest god, the King who supports the tribes, that
the anger of this god be no longer turned against men.1
And as a final illustration of this widespread religious
tendency, reference may be made to the prayer of the
Assyrian King Assur-bani-pal, an impressive prayer for
life, addressed to the god Nebo. This utterance from the
dim past is more than a prayer simply ; it is a dramatic
dialogue, and contains the answer of the god. And it is
clear that the prayer has not come to Nebo direct from
Assur-bani-pal, but has been brought to the god by some
intermediary. " Thy life," says Nebo to the King, " has
been brought before me in supplication thus : His life do
thou prolong, even the life of Assur-bani-pal ! ' Nebo thus
speaks to the suppliant direct, though the King's prayer
comes to Nebo through ' Urkittu.' And in the same strange
dialogue, there is indicated a still farther step of mediation :

" Fear not, Assur-bani-pal," says the god Nebo, " long
life will I give unto thee :

" Fair winds from thy life will I appoint :

" My mouth speaking that which is good shall cause thy
prayer to be heard in the assembly of the great gods."

Between Nebo and one so exalted as the monarch of a
proud world-empire, there is an intermediary ; but even
the god Nebo is conceived also as an advocate who will
carry the petition still higher even to the assembly cf the
great gods.2

The remoteness or nearness of the gods thus expressed by
the presence or absence of mediation and in other ways,
appears in still another form — in the relation of the highest
god to the creation of the physical world. There is no

1 Vedic Hymns, IV, i (XLVI, 307).

2 Strong's tr. in Records of the Past, new series, VI, 104 ff. In the
earlier translation by Oppert (in Ledrain's Histoire d'Israel, 1882, Pt. II,
p. 486 f.) the mediatory feature, while far less clear, is not entirely absent.

Divinity at Hand, and Afar Off 3 1 5

necessity in logic that the object of religious worship should
also be thought the cause of natural things ; but the im-
pulse to explain is strong in man, and generally the chief
divinities are regarded as the source or fashioners of nature
and mankind. The images of the way in which the creative
power works are varied and most interesting. The great
god may work like a magician or enchanter, and changes
be produced, no man can say how. Or the world or parts
of it may come from some great spider, perhaps because
the spider makes its web so craftily.1 Or the world comes
like the coming of young life — from an egg, or by living
birth.2 Again, the world or man may be fashioned as by
a workman using materials he finds at hand : the creator
is pictured as a fashioner of metals,3 or a potter, or an artist
chiselling in stone.4 The God may call the world into its
present form by the power of his commanding word.5 Or
the creative force may come from the glance of his eye, or
from his heart or his hidden will or understanding.6

But when the divine life is overpoweringly felt to be
apart, unimaginable, ineffable, then it seems sacrilegious to
say that from such sublimity the things of this gross earth
could directly spring. There must be some indirection,
some middle term, between the great Original and this poor
world with all its imperfections. Nature no longer comes
immediately from God, but from a subordinate power, some
' archon/ or ' demiurge.' Thus for some of the mystics of
the early Christian Church, the Creator in the Hebrew
scriptures was such a subordinate being ; he came too close
to the commonplace and evil facts of life to be identified
with that Highest to whom no action, no qualities, no pre-
dicates— not even existence — could rightly be ascribed. In

1 Stevenson : " The Sia," Eleventh An. Rep. Bureau of Ethnol., 1894,
pp. 26 ff.

2 Cf.. e.g., Kalevala, Rune I. 3 Ibid., Rune VII.

* Book of the Dead, Papyrus of Nesi-Khonsu (Budge, 646 ; and cf.
note p. 150) ; Sayce : Religs. of Anc. Egypt and Babylonia, 1902, p. 83.

6 Genesis, I ; Maspero: Dawn of Civilization, tr. McClure, 1894, p. 147.

6 Zend-Avesta, Gathas, XXXI, 7 (XXXI, 44) ; Book of the Dead
(Budge, 646).

316 Psychology of the Religious Life

the attempt to cover the measureless distance from such a
height, there was developed a great system or series of
effluxes by which the creative descent was made gradual
from the Ultimate Source of all, down to the world of the
things we see and touch.

These few illustrations may be sufficient to show that in
the different forms of the doctrine of creation we find a
differing sense of the nearness or remoteness of divinity.
The distance and separation of God from common experience
is expressed by his being less directly creative ; while the
religious feeling that brings God near is inclined to attribute
creation to him in his own proper person. But as in the
case of the interest or indifference of heaven toward man-
kind no exclusive choice need be made, so here. An in-
decision between the opposing views is seen in the great
classic of Vishnuism, where the feelings of nearness and of
distance puzzlingly alternate : at one moment the divinity
is declared to be identified with everything that is, and to
be the sole activity in the universe ;x while at the next the
worshipper, overcome by the feeling of God's sublimity,
declares him to be the cause of nothing in this world.
' The Lord is not the cause of actions, or of the capacity of
performing actions amongst men, or of the connection of
action and fruit. But nature only works. The Lord
receives no one's sin, nor merit either."2

We thus find two opposing tendencies manifesting them-
selves in many ways — a tendency to keep the gods close
to earth and mankind, close in interest and in intercourse,
close in character, close in the sense that they are them-
selves the makers or fashioners of all material things ; and
the contrasting tendency to keep the gods afar off — too far
away to have created the earth, lacking interest in human
affairs, incapable of being clearly known.

If we were to press forward, seeking an explanation of
this group of oppositions, we should, in the first place,

1 See pp. 294 f., 297. z Bhagavadgita, V (VIII, 65).

Divinity at Hand, and Afar Off 317

see that the same kind of conflict is found in secular life.
Wherever man feels that matters must be made as near
perfection as possible, wherever there is an impulse to
compare things with some absolute standard, and where
common reality must thus in thought be placed beside an
ideal reality — whether it be in the realm of philosophy or
of politics or of art or of romantic love or of plain commercial
dealing — in all such regions a contrast or conflict is apt to
arise which in its spirit is like the one that we have just
been viewing. A few illustrations will perhaps make this
clearer.

In Plato the world of Ideas, which is the place of all per-
fection, is felt in two opposing ways. The Ideas or Ideals
of earthly objects are often described as though utterly out
of touch with the actual objects of which they are the per-
fection. The true philosopher studies death ; for only
death can free him from the presence of the forms of sense
which pervert the mind and blind it to the clear outline of
the ideal.1 The real and the ideal are here hopelessly apart,
and the ideal reality can be approached only by surrender-
ing through death the things of life. But elsewhere we
have an entirely different view. The ' philosopher '• —and
he is to be the ruler of the perfect commonwealth — must
actually bring the Ideal down to earth, and make it here
a living fact.2 Perfection and the world of sense are now
no longer viewed as incompatible and fated to lie apart ; an
intercourse must be established, and the two made one.

But it is not alone in philosophy and in the theory of
statecraft that such a contrast is found, so that ideal and
fact are now intimate and now far disjoined. While practical
politics has made prominent those who lack ideals, it has
also brought into view those whose ideal world is out of
touch with actual life, and who feel that — because of the
very elevation of their standards — they are forced to stand
aloof and take no part. One may have sympathy with those
who feel no gift for political leadership, but hardly with
1 PhcBdo, 65-68. 3 Republic, Bk. VII, 514-20.

318 Psychology of the Religious Life

those for whom the actual condition is so far from ideal
that they must only look on, pained and impotent. For-
tunately, however, there are men of the opposite type —
who value what is higher than anything yet realized, and
who have some genius for seeing how the present things
can be brought nearer what they value. For them the ideal
does not keep afar from earth, lest its purity be sullied ; it
touches common things at every point.

In art the worshippers of the far-off ideal are those who
find beauty only in what is unlike all actual existence.
They paint only ' ideal ' faces, or mystical figures from
legend or from allegory, confining themselves thus rigidly
to stained-glass-window topics. With those of different
temperament, who yet may truly be called idealists,
beauty is discovered close to this present life, and they
suggest in their work a perfected reality, where concrete
fact and ideality may blend.

And if one might introduce into a cold discussion like
this of ours a theme more fit for verse, there are different
types of romantic love. Many a youth with eyes upon the
ideal still finds enough of perfection in poor mortality to
warrant him directing thither some warm affection. A few
lovers, however — votaries of the far-off ideal — perceive all
flesh and blood to lack so painfully the qualities they ad-
mire, that their affections remain ever detached and object-
less, so far as concerns this world below the moon.

Finally, the same contrast might be pointed out even
in the world of commerce — where those who, with fine
sentiment and looking far away, fret futilely at the sordid-
ness of trade, in which their lives are cast, stand sharp
against others who, feeling no less the imperfection and the
perfect, bring the two into active intercourse. But probably
we have had more than enough of such analogues of what
is in the centre of our interest. Yet we ought to feel that
here is something more than mere analogy. Unless there
has been some error, we really have been observing but
varied instances of the self-same mental fact, though

Divinity at Hand, ana Afar Off 319

mingled in each case with a different alloy and used in a
different setting.

As for the causes of the special contrasts in depicting the
character of the religious ideal and its relation to material
and mortal things, the first thought might be that the
different forms in which the divine life appears are due to
the different patterns with which people are familiar, and
especially to the different patterns of government. When
considering the contrast between polytheism and mono-
theism such political models were found to be of influence ;
and heaven in many ways appeared as at once an imitation
and an idealization of earth. So it might seem that the
God felt to be close to man was, perhaps, but a projection
upon the heavens of the earthly ruler who is near — the
patriarch meeting his people face to face, and hedged about
with no courtiers and ceremony. And, according to this
view, the far-off God would be an imitation of those forms
of polity where the monarch is so exalted as to have no
intercourse with his subjects, and to be for them distant
and mysterious.

Some evidence could be adduced for such a theory.1 The
remote, indifferent God is often found in communities where
despotism has emphasized in many ways the distance be-
tween the monarch and the people. The belief of the
Yorubas (described but a few pages before) that God is to
be approached only through supernatural intercessors,
through orisas, who must first be conciliated by offerings
of sheep or pigeons or the like, is exactly analogous to the
usage in secular government of this same people. Petitioners
approach the king only through his servants, courtiers, and
nobles, who receive " good words and presents " for their
work of intercession.2 So, too, the numerous and impassable
castes which lie between subject and ruler in India may
have had something to do with the development there of the

1 See, e.g., Ames : Psychology of Religious Experience, 1910.
1 Bowen : " Yoruba Language," etc., Introd., p. xvi, in Smithsonian
Contributions to Knowl., Vol. X, 1858.

320 Psychology of the Religious Life

religious idea of the Distant, the Unspeakable. In Greece,
on the other hand, where caste had no such place and where
men rose readily to leadership and returned again to a
subject's rank, the gods mingle in the affairs of men. The
political situation here may have influenced the religious
thought. Yet it is also possible that with the Greek
and Barbarian both the political and the religious sym-
pathies came from some common source. Indeed, it is
easy to overvalue (as to undervalue) the influence of ex-
ternal patterns.

When we look over the field as a whole, there is much to
show that the forces forming such religious ideas work
more subtly than do outward political forms. The Persians,
among whom there was quite as ample opportunity as with
the people of India for copying in religion the traits of
haughty rulers, inclined much less than the Hindus to
represent the gods as indescribably exalted. So, too, the
Christian emphasis on a God become man, on a God who
humbled himself that man might be lifted up, was hardly
copied from the lives of contemporary rulers ; if such ex-
amples had influence at all, it was as negative examples,
showing what to avoid. Moreover, the mystical elevation
of divinity until all human predicates are left below, going
ever higher and higher until the definite reality disappears
in an emotional haze — this idea has recurred in communities
where also the opposite religious conception holds its
ground. The mystic Lao-tze, for whom the Highest was
to be called the Form of the Formless, the Fleeting, and
the Indeterminable, was of the same country as Confucius,
for whom the objects of worship, it must be confessed, were
hardly warm of blood, yet as nature-deities and ancestors
of the family and the state they were not quite beyond
all human thought and interest. And in Alexandria, the
extreme expression of the religious view that God is different
from all that we can see or think, developed under social
and political conditions that certainly were not diametrically
opposed to those which saw the birth of Christianity.

Divinity at Hand, and Afar Off 321

The character of the religious ideal, then, in the par-
ticulars which we have just been studying, is not fixed by
political forms, though it may be influenced by them. There
seems to be at work something more secret, more internal —
found, I believe, in half-hidden memories, without feeling ;
in peculiar adjustments of pleasure and pain ; but, most of
all, in differences of desire, according to which some men
are controlled by interest in their fellows, while others are
dominated by one of several interests where sympathy
plays no part. But this is merely to name the causes, with-
out seeing them. Actually to observe them and at work,
one must look into the deep nature of that act by which we
idealize.

In a measure the present part of our study has, perhaps,
helped us to such an end. Some glimpse has been caught
of the means by which we depict the divine — of the various
media which the mind uses in its representation of the ideal ;
a glimpse, too, of the contrasts within the character of the
divine. Thus the process by which we form our ideal has
in part been long before us, but now calls for another mode
of study. As we go further any partial interest becomes
more difficult, until it is idle longer to attempt attention
first and foremost to the work of intellect or of any other
special power. It were better now to look to the inter-
play of energies that primarily and exclusively are neither
of knowledge nor of emotion nor of action and the will,
but possess a full rounded life, of which these special
terms represent but the separate sections. It should then
be easier to see religion with some semblance of entirety
and in truer connection with the rest of human effort.
Yet we need not wholly lose interest in some of the problems
already encountered, but may glance back at them from a
different point, and enlarge our acquaintance even with
what we have left behind.

PART IV
CENTRAL FORCES OF RELIGION

CHAPTER XXIII

THE IDEALIZING ACT

IT is a mark of human nature — though the same trait
appears in life still lower — to transform its neighbour-
hood. Often, and indeed usually, this is done without
deliberate intent, there being an unconscious betrayal of
wants and purposes that will not quite permit a passive
and satisfied acceptance of what is found at hand. Con-
structed dwellings, clothing patched together or woven,
utensils and tools and weapons, the planting and garnering
of grain — all these give evidence that nature's direct pro-
vision does not satisfy, but must be eked out by art or
artifice to allay some mild discontent. And these crude
endeavours to supplement nature's rich parsimony are
doubtless idealization in its infant or perhaps prenatal
state.

The impulse to mould the facts until they more nearly
conform to some inner rule and standard — to supplement
them, if need be, by direct addition — appears in many
different forms between idealization's infancy and its
maturer years. The adornment which so many primitive
utensils and weapons undergo shows a continuance of man's
physical meddling with what is given : even his own pro-
ducts, made to satisfy his physical needs, must be further
modified to suit his pleasures. And in the simple act of
sight or hearing or touch we always perceive more than our
sense-impressions warrant. Human speech and laughter
are, in their bare reality, a mere spatter of sound which we,
in hearing, instantly amplify until there seems to emerge

325

326 Psychology of the Religious Life

from them the speaker's full meaning and mood. The field
of view, with its different distances and solidities — house-
tops, chimneys, trees, spires and towers — whose entire
reality and connections vision seems directly to present, is
but a clever wash of bright and dark, of green, yellow, red,
and blue, inwardly enveloped in muscular strain and orbital
friction and pressure. The direct sensations here coming
from the visual organ are to an almost incredible extent
supplemented and transmuted by the inner powers which
greet the influx. And this so fundamental enrichment of
the given fact is carried still further when causes are imagined
for the events that are perceived, or where memory brings
back absent fact. The whole panorama of the past, whose
reality seems so unquestionable, is not sensibly assured to
us, but is a skilful piece of mental architecture to round out
the fragmentary present.

In countless ways, while believing that the tumbled ruins
of fact are merely being ' restored/ we refurbish and enlarge,
according to ideas of completeness for which the facts
themselves furnish but distant hints.

The completion of the observed world by adding to it
that great unobserved world so real to the religious, is
therefore no anomaly. It is the most impressive, but by
no means the only, evidence of that large dissatisfaction
with what is given, which is found in every region and course
of human character. The instinct to remodel the given fact
to our own satisfaction — at first to meet physical needs,
but soon to meet the no less urgent need of beauty and
justice and intelligibility — by this wide instinct all are
moved. So far as it works in the religious region, its char-
acter has been before us throughout this essay. But here
toward the close a more particular and summary account
should be attempted, of the different ideas and desires
which direct the formation of the religious ideal. The
account intended will prove to be little more than a dry
list of several of the impulses which influence the form
the ideal assumes before the mind's eye.

The Idealizing Act 327

The ideal is the picture of what will satisfy in fullest
measure our desires. Sensuous pleasures are often a per-
manent feature in the ideal ; as when the Arabian Paradise,
besides fellowship and the reunited family, has plentiful
flowing water and cool shade and fruits and large-eyed
maids. The ideal in its simpler form is, then, the image
and promise of sensuous delights.

But the features in the ideal which reflect these more
primitive and receptive instincts habitually find themselves
made relatively less important because of a somewhat rival
love of Action and of Power. The great changes in the
physical world — raging fires, storms, earthquakes — have
an astonishing fascination. And nearly as great as this
strange satisfaction in beholding destructive power, is the
pleasure in producing change ourselves — in doing, irre-
spective of the character of the deed. And therefore power —
at first mainly physical, but soon including what is psychic,
as men respect more and more the secret influence of words
and will and thought — enters prominently into the image
of the Best. God is felt to be the one who is powerful
beyond all human strength :

"By the breath of God ice is given:
And the breadth of the waters is congealed.
Yea, he ladeth the thick cloud with moisture;
He spreadeth abroad the cloud of his lightning:
And it is turned round about by his guidance,
That they may do whatsoever he commandeth them
Upon the face of the habitable world." 1

Largely that the Ideal may be the utter completion of
power, God is often, but not always, made to be the fashioner
or creator of the world. God it is who hath laid the founda-
tions of the earth, and shut the sea with doors ; he hath
commanded the morning, and caused the dayspring to know
its place.2

But herein an entirely different motive reinforces the love
of power. The mature and civilized man, the savage, the

i Job, XXXVII, io-i2. 2 Ibid., XXXVIII, 4-12.

328 Psychology of the Religious Life

child, even the higher of the beasts — all these are attentive
to upheaval or devastation ; but more than this, they are
possessed of curiosity, since, even in minor changes, they
discern with satisfaction the operating cause. This curiosity,
schooled and made methodical, works not only in science,
but in religion ; and that the Unseen, the Ideal, should be
conceived as Creator springs largely from this passion to
explain.

If one may pay no heed to the order of history, but
catalogue by a different rule the desires that have to do
with the Ideal, there might next be named the gratification
felt by man, when once he has become familiar with the
instruments of his own thought, in bringing to completion
the processes of argument and proof. Such a satisfaction
is neighbour to the love of causal explanation already named;
but with this difference, that the missing term whose dis-
covery is hailed with joy is not some event or coercive
power such as the causal instinct seeks, but is a more
subtle reality to which others look as their completing idea
or sufficient reason. All subordinate ideas and conclusions
imply, as their justification, a higher truth, an ulterior
premiss. And therefore the Ideal, which is to be the sum
of all perfections, not only must be the unlimited Power,
the unmatched creative Energy, but must answer to that
Conception which requires no other for its support, which
gives in itself its own ample justification. But the desire
for such logical completeness is not easy to satisfy when
dialectic interest has once been sharpened. For it is ex-
tremely difficult to construct a thought that implies nothing
beyond itself. Our common ideas all live surrounded by
other ideas, and serve as foils to one another, giving out-
line or definition each to what adjoins it — the masculine
becoming of definite meaning because set over against the
feminine, and both of these against the brutal. But with the
Ideal in its self-perfection there appears this difficulty, that
if we make it full of positive qualities, like goodness, strength,
and knowledge, there seems to hover about it a cloud of

The Idealizing Act 329

opposing and negative qualities — evil, weakness, ignorance.
And these, being outside the divine, make it appear to be
limited by them and therefore short of infinite. If, however,
these and all other negative qualities are boldly included in
the being of the Ideal until this embraces all that can be
thought ; then in satisfying logic, offence is given to morals
and to the sense of heroism ; and the image of the all-
inclusive God becomes ungodlike by revealing internal
conflict and confusion.

There is thus a contradiction in the assertions to which
these different interests lead. The purely logical search for
the Infinite ends in the thought that all must be included ;
the moral search for the Infinite, or Highest, ends in the
thought that much must be debarred. For in the moral
ideal there is implied sympathy and help ; there are recog-
nized, not only by man, but also by the divinity, the need
of companionship and of wide stretches of reality beyond
the self. The forces of life do not work from a single centre,
but are resident here and there ; action and reaction occur ;
real work of assistance is performed.

The acceptance of this form of Ideal seems to mean, in a
sense, the surrender of infinity. Yet more truly it is the
surrender of a poorer for a richer and less formal infinity—
an infinity in which less stress is laid on quantity, or all-
inclusiveness, and more on quality, that it shall be of un-
surpassed, indeed unsurpassable, kind and worth. The
logical power, all eager to climb the scala divisionis to the
topmost round, has been forced to heed the suggestions of our
social nature. It is, of course, the intellect still that formu-
lates the outcome of such compromise ; that states the
new form under which Perfection, or Infinity, appears. Yet
this intellectual statement is far different from what it
would have been had the intellect disregarded our social
needs. Such an accommodation, however, is not without
precedent. In giving detail to the thought of Perfection,
our sensuous desires have, by common agreement, been
prevented from pressing their claims beyond a certain point.

330 Psychology of the Religious Life

They can only be granted so much voice in determining the
character of the Best as does not make this seem short of
Best when estimated by our other interests. And each of
these other interests and powers must in like manner
recognize the limits imposed by comity. We do not seek
what will appear Best to some special part of us, but best
to our nature as a whole.

Yet another part of this nature of ours complicates the
effort to form a satisfying idea of perfection. Although eat-
ing and drinking and gratifications belonging to their order
are, in the end, made subordinate in the Ideal, there is an
interest of ours beginning on the sensuous plane, which
rightly exerts an influence all along — the sense of beauty.
The art impulse is present even to primitive men and to
children, and makes its power felt, not only in some slight
but gratifying change in useful things, but in the small and
large formalities of conduct, and in the rhythm and tone
of dance with music and recitation. Especially in the great
sagas, the gods, in look and words and dramatic action, are
formed to answer to this love of sound and colour, and of
strong sinew and muscle. The worship of sun and stars, of
storm and lightning, is not entirely due to their direct
physical importance for men. The Vedas, like the Book of
Job, express the beauty of the outer world. And while the
frequent tragic element in myth, where the power that has
men's sympathy suffers defeat, may have had its origin in
utilitarian rites or in the direct suggestion of nature, as
some insist, yet this tragic element outlasts such origin
and retains its hold on men's conception of the Divine, to
some extent because of its pure dramatic force.

The sympathy and personal disappointment which enter
into the tragedy of the Ideal bring one to a whole group of
influences of a more clearly social stamp than are most of
those so far considered. And here an important place be-
longs to family interest. Since the family bond is vital in
human affairs, and the son submits to his father's will and
avenges his father's wrongs, or inherits wealth and station

The Idealizing Act 331

through his mother, and seeks in many ways to protect
and aggrandize those of his own blood, it is natural that the
conception of the Best should be intimate with this domi-
nating interest. Ancestor worship, in its wide extent from
Maryland to China, connects the ideal with the importance
of the family. Guided by the gratification and desire con-
nected with the greatness of the line, the sires of the family
or tribe, together with its present living members, are
regarded as the object of supreme importance.

The ideal is not always brought to perfect system ; and
even where ancestor worship exists, other social bonds
may be recognized in varying degrees of faintness or of
strength. There are gods recognized who exceed the
family limit, having an interest in men of other blood.
Here the force of common humanity is at work, and the
interest in a union on a world-wide scale. The recognition
of the claims of manhood, apart from any special ties of
clan or nation or language or colour, makes its slow way,
urging and urged on by the sense of the common father-
hood of God.

In addition to the immediate feeling of the ties which
hold together great masses of men, our picture of Perfection
is strongly influenced by the machinery needed to maintain
any great human union. The officials of earthly organizations
— the judge, the general, the priest, the king — loom large
in human eyes ; and the gods come to be, in the spiritual
realm, the still further enlargement of these august types.
The impression received from all such officers is uncon-
sciously expected even from the Ideal, and so we find these
great titles, and the great functions which go with title and
office, imaginatively augmented and carried into the very
heavens.

Finally, among the desires and satisfactions which mould
the image of the Best, a place should fall to human friendli-
ness— a motive having much in common with other social
impulses, but also sufficiently distinct. Companionship of
one man with another comes in time to be prized as a good

332 Psychology of the Religious Life

that is additional to whatever comes through the family ;
independent also of the great governmental ties, the rela-
tion of subject and ruler. The connection between brothers
is, perhaps, the nearest approach to it in the family life,
and yet even this is less free, less elective, than that of
friends. So friendship conies to be distinguished and to
receive peculiar warmth of praise — as in the story of David
and Jonathan, of Damon and Pythias, and many more. And
as men would enjoy friendship in very perfection, the
religious Ideal comes gradually to be seen as the fulfil-
ment of this desire, and the divinity is felt to be closer than
a brother, as the Friend of friends. The restraint even of
the paternal bond here has vanished, and only its sympathy
and fine stir remain. Friendship may be regarded almost
as an institution beside those of the family and the state,
and coming in late days to influence the ideal as truly as do
they.

Thus the cravings and appreciations by which the image
of the Perfect receives form, include sensuous pleasure and
the love of action, together with the curiosity for causes, the
need of logical sufficiency, the delight in beauty, the sense
of the importance of the family, of larger human unions and
the lordship and magistracy which accompany these, and
finally of the golden gifts of friendship. This catalogue of
idealizing forces is certainly imperfect, and a further
scrutiny would easily enlarge it ; but it will at least dis-
tantly indicate the rich variety of energies which are here
at work. But it is not to be thought that these are active
all the while, or in like degree in all persons. And since
with different groups of men the ideal is formed under the
persuasion of these desires in varying combination, the
list helps us the better to understand the contrast among
men in regard to the place and nature of their worshipped
objects.

Especially does the different constitution of the idealizing
act help us to see more clearly the movements which affect

The Idealizing Act 333

the distance and the sharpness of outline of Divinity.
Minds whose guiding motive is the appreciation of creative
power or generation, are almost of necessity induced to
locate the most important of such operations — and conse-
quently the focal interest and effective worth of the Being
from which they spring — in a distant past. Moreover, in a
Being who displays chiefly this great cosmological activity,
there is little to stir sympathy or the sense of a close per-
sonal tie. And, likewise, minds that are dominated by a
desire for logical sufficiency — where the religious object is
refined and attenuated by all the critical instruments of an
intellect impatient of fixed limits to its sweep — such minds
usually attain their self-sufficient Reason, if at all, only by
a long and perilous ascent which makes it seem inevitably
remote, wanting in contour, aloof from all our character and
concerns. Those, too, whose idealizing effort is guided
mainly by the aesthetic sense may easily be satisfied with
an image of perfection wherein responsiveness to us is
regarded as unessential. Just as the intellect is capable of
crossing the gulf which lies between us and objects or ideas
that are most unlike ourselves — abstractions, negative
entities, puzzling or impossible essences, where a feeling
of fellowship with us need play no part — so the feeling for
beauty often leads to a satisfaction in what is vague and
far removed from us in place and native bent. Quite apart
from any lurking personification, men find a delicate plea-
sure in the forms of plants and shells, of waves and clouds,
in the extent of the sky by day or in the immensities of the
vaulted stars. Some receive almost an intoxication in
contemplating the endless spaces between or beyond the
heavenly bodies/or the unimaginable remoteness of geologic
time. That such objects often are of no practical importance,
and are devoid of consciousness and cannot respond to man's
interest — this does not chill the pleasure, butifmay augment
it. And since there is a like freedom in gratifying the more
vegetative and animal desires or causal curiosity, as well as
in appreciating mere power or dialectic completeness or

334 Psychology of the Religious Life

aesthetic stir — since in all these the object, to be satisfying,
need not be like us or with interest in us, the religious Ideal
that takes form from any part or from the whole of this
wide range of influences may easily remain at the farthest
pole from ready and sympathetic intercourse with men,
and even from definiteness and intelligibility.

But where the religious ideal comes to life under the
warm influence of those appreciations which are more social,
the Perfect is far more apt to meet our sympathetic needs.
Satisfaction in the family or tribe or state, or in their
eminent personages, or in the less fixed and rigid ties of
human intercourse, tends to make men see the object of
adoration as of a nature essentially like ours — having interest
and quick preference, love and hate, holding the rewards of
good and evil. And after this broad modelling, other in-
fluences can then act, introducing elements of power and
beauty and logical harmony, without quite undoing the work
already done. God conceived under inducements of social
feeling is, from the beginning, close to men, is attentive,
even if not at first friendly ; and the conception grows
with human growth, and often faster than this, until God
is felt to be the great resource, the supreme encouragement
to man to ennoble all his living. In retaining this intimacy,
the Divine is not only at hand and favouring, but is definite
and knowable. The God near to man, and the God of
definite and knowable character, are thus the connected ex-
pression of this motive of sympathy.

The account of the inner forces which wonderfully diversify
men's anticipation of the Perfect would be far more incom-
plete than it must needs be, if certain further facts were left
unnoticed. The thought of God as afar may occur not only
in idealization guided by the relatively unsocial desires,
but also as a result of memory or habit retaining the great
figures of a creed that has for some reason lost its hold
on interest and feeling, without being entirely discarded
from the mind. The gods of a people who once possessed

The Idealizing Act 335

the land often take this cool intellectual place in the faith
of the invader. The gods of the conquered are conceived
as subject to the incoming gods, and their rites live on
among some of the population ; but with the people as a
whole, or in the religion of the dominant life, they appear
like beached and bleached wrecks of a once active faith.

And a certain difference in human constitution is also
important here. Most of us are keyed to receive pleasure
oftener than pain. For since pleasure is the normal feeling
connected with beneficent influences, with increase of
vitality, with all appropriate activity of body and of mind ;
while pain comes normally with injury, with restricted
action, with sapping of strength — since this is so, it is
inevitable that any race that is to live and grow and domi-
nate a part of earth must be affected more frequently or
more profoundly by the forces that further life and so
give pleasure, than by those that retard life and bring pain.
We might, therefore, expect to find men accustomed to
receive pleasure from their actual surroundings, even when
they can see that their situation is far from perfect. And
in spite of the raven-philosophers, the facts seem to come
forth to satisfy this expectation. There is in the plain man
usually a sound appreciation of the good of his lot : his
children are better than others', he has his own house and
likes it, the town where he lives is more attractive than the
neighbouring places, and his country is the greatest upon
earth. His minor grumblings simply indicate a discriminat-
ing mind, giving point and weight to his large approvals.

But there are exceptional persons, and even large groups
of persons, in whom this normally pleasurable reaction
somehow fails. The dominant note with them is depression,
is pain. We need not have in mind those who are subject
to external want or to persistent physical suffering ; for
sufferers often are among the buoyant. But for no assign-
able outer cause or reason, some find everything about
them disappointing. When these form their ideal, they in-
evitably are influenced by the pain that flows in upon them

336 Psychology of the Religious Life

from every side ; and the world of thought or of the imagina-
tion, in which they take their refuge, is constructed by anti-
thesis to what appears in actual life. The world of the
Perfect with them is as unlike the actual as can be con-
ceived. And what is radically unlike all that we experience
must of necessity tend toward the unimaginable, the incom-
municable, what is vague, negative, characterless, and
with no strong interest in this world nor influence upon it.
Thus the object chosen for the reverence of such persons is
apt to be an expression of their underlying disappoint-
ment, of a disillusion coming from mood or temperament
rather than from force of candid evidence. It may pass
into full pessimism, and then nothing in all this life —
neither in themselves nor in others nor in the outlying world
—can enter into the Ideal, which becomes an escape from
existence, and the person " passes finally away in that utter
passing away which leaves nothing whatever to remain."1

Men of the other type of character, more gratified than
distressed by things existent, feel no such impulse to keep
all that is actual away from the Ideal. The life they live
holds for them too much good to be utterly cast aside ; it
has much that can be carried over almost unchanged into
the picture of the perfect. And so, for them, the Ideal is
less remote, less alien to the actual life. The two worlds
have common elements and a common plan, and free com-
munication between them seems natural and necessary.
The near divinity is thus the normal religious object of
those for whom pain is outweighed by pleasure — not
pleasure momentary or by expensive stimulation, but of
nature and of habit. That the Ideal seems close to such
men is in keeping with their hopefulness — a hope which
need not be blind to defect nor unacquainted with suffering.
In this insufficient way we might indicate how vitally im-
portant for our thought of God's inner character and of his
relation to the world is the nature of our usual response to

1 Maha-Parinibbana-Sutta, IV, 50; cf. Ill, 20, V, 20, etc. (XI, 81,
48, 90).

The Idealizing Act 337

what life offers — whether pleasure or pain with us is upper-
most.

The attention just given to the idealizing process will
perhaps weaken the temptation to say that religion flows
entirely from the social nature of man — from his dis-
satisfaction with actual society, and a craving for its per-
fection. Like all the great activities — poetry, painting,
scientific study, the growth of forms of government —
religion makes use of different minds and of the contributed
gains of generations ; and therefore is a social, a co-operative
measure ; but not distinctively so. As we have just seen,
the form in which the Best appears to men's eyes, while
influenced by a whole group of social impulses — the im-
pulses that give reality and importance to country, to kith
and kin, and to friends — yet is also profoundly affected by
motives connected with high curiosity, with the desire to
see the cause of change, and with the interest in change
itself, apart from its cause or any practical result. It would
seem as much a forcing of facts to attribute such primitive
impulses to the social consciousness or to social claims or
social imitation as it would be to explain in any such way
our sense of colour and sound, or the native dislike of cold
and spiders, or the enjoyment of food. The reverence which
men have shown the Highest has usually been, not alone
because it fulfilled their social needs, but also because of its
satisfaction to sensuous and aesthetic and causal and logical
needs, which grow, it is true, by the mutual friction and
support of men, but seem not to originate in this way nor
to be part and parcel of the social feeling itself.

Yet in those high religions that are not atheistic the social
feelings are probably the dominant ones ; and even in the
religion of some Buddhists that is atheism, there is, perhaps,
this connection with social impulse, that the denial of a
personal Ideal may possibly be found to spring from a one-
sided overstraining and exhaustion of these moral instincts
themselves. The very intemperance of the desire for an

338 Psychology of the Religious Life

absolutely perfect social union has possibly worked to
undermine an appreciation of the plain realities of life, of
which so large a part are under personal form. The state-
ment that religion finds its mental origin and characteristic
in social features and social instincts is, then, largely true.
But there is in religion so much that is not of the nature of
social response, and there are so many forms of social
response that are not religious, that much wearisome taking-
in and letting-out of this verbal garment are needed before
it can exactly fit the body of the facts.

The truer statement seems to be that since the idea of
the Best is moulded by so many psychic activities — by pain
and pleasure derived from people and from things, and
caused by the manifold desires connected with every
function of mind and body — it is idle to speak of any
particular human activity as the sole source even of idealiza-
tion, much less of that still greater breadth of response
which enters into religion as a whole. To reverence, nothing
is foreign that is of man. For even where the human is
rejected from the Ideal, the whole human character stands
at the back of this rejection, including it and giving it
occasion and form.

CHAPTER XXIV

CHANGE AND PERMANENCE IN THE IDEAL

/TTVHE stability of religion is almost concealed in its
J_ incessant movement. Neither the divine honours
themselves, nor they who pay the honours, nor those to
whom they are paid, seem to display much but inconstancy.
These changes, moreover, are often in the inner spirit
rather than in the outward appearance, and may be deep
and revolutionary. The ceremonies connected with per-
sonal crises — with birth and maturity and death — which in
early times are little more than crude devices to protect
from impending malice and harm, change into noble expres-
sions of the hope and need of divine care when life feebly
enters and finds its strength and passes out. The priest,
once close in office to the sorcerer and magician, ceases in
time to be a mere performer of occult rites and becomes a
prophet and representative of divine nobility, giving by
his own character and perception and intercourse with the
best from past and future a fresh impression of the nature
and purpose of Godhood. Impossible as it seems, the
mumbling medicine-man is the far-off precursor of St.
Francis and Savonarola, of Wesley and Luther. And the
same change goes on in other parts. Sacrifice, which at
first is intended to satisfy the animal needs of the wor-
shipped, and later gratifies them rather by the mere plea-
sures of taste and smell, becomes finally a symbolic utter-
ance to God of submission and faithful reverence. Physical
offerings that once were thought to have virtue in them-

339

34O Psychology of the Religious Life

selves give place to the more acceptable sacrifice of a
humbled and contrite spirit. And the shedding of blood,
by some believed to be needed to satisfy the technical
demands of justice if not the craving for animal food, is
later felt to bring spiritual healing only by its power to
teach, by its exhibition of the cruelty hidden in narrow
piety, by its example of heroic fidelity to truth.

The race and the person are for ever outgrowing the
earlier reverence, while yet remaining reverent. Or if the
old usage is preserved, it is forced to express an altered
meaning. The new that comes must still listen to the old ;
and the old, in the shift of thought and people, cannot
remain entirely as it was. Thus the growth is unmistakable,
and yet is not without some unconscious recollection of
what has gone before — like the identity of a man with his
own childish self. If a fact so well known need be exem-
plified, Perunu, the old god of thunder with the Russians, is
still venerated by the peasants, it is said, under the form of
Elijah ;x the Chaldean account of the flood passes over to the
Israelite, taking on, in the transition, a more moral tone ;
and in the Northern myths, tales like that of the Virgin
Mary and of the Baptist and of the infant Moses seem to be
confusedly echoed in a form that shows the influence of
another mental world : The Virgin Mariatta is quickened
of a mountain-berry, and to her a child is born in the
manger of the fire-horse Hisi — a babe that vanishes, and
later is found in the reeds and rushes of the Fenland ; and
as the child grows, the old magician-minstrel Wainamoinen
sees in his coming the wane of the older minstrelsy, and
sings farewell to Northland.2 The innovator Mohammed
takes the great shrine — the Kaabah — at Mecca, where
devotion to the old tribal gods had been paid from the
dimmest past ; and clearing it of idols, as many as the
days of the year, dedicates it to the service of the chief of
the old gods, Allah. He uses, too, for the new faith the

1 Leger : La mythologie slave, 1901, pp. 66 ff., 76.

2 Kalevala, Rune L (Crawford, 717 ff.)-

Change and Permanence in the Ideal 341

long-established Pilgrimage, and the visitation to Mount
Zafa and Mount Marwa, before sacred to other gods.1
And still in modern times the old yields to the new, but
in yielding transforms what takes its place. Uchimura is
about to leave Japan for the Western world, both he and
his father having become converted to Christianity :
"After my father's heart-rending prayers for the watchful
care of Providence over his son," we are told, " he took me
to the ancestral shrine which we still kept, and there
bade me to address myself to the soul of my departed
grandfather before I would cross the threshold of my house
on this hazardous voyage. ... I bowed my head, and my
soul, directed alike to my Heavenly Father and to the
departed spirits of my ancestors, engaged in a sort of
meditation at once a prayer and a retrospection."

It would be needless to illustrate afresh the endless
variety of objects that have been worshipped, and the im-
possibility of discovering in them the permanent and essential
quality of religion. But it would seem no less difficult to
find its permanent and essential nature in the feeling with
which these objects are regarded. For at one time timid
self-concern is prominent, and again there is easy confidence.
The deterrent, the formidable or mysterious appearance of
the unseen world, may stir some, while for others the Divine
seems beckoning and intelligible and fit for friendship. The
essence of religious feeling, then, is neither in sympathy nor
in antipathy exclusively, nor in both of these commingled ;
for often there is little or nothing but a quiet practical
submission or perhaps an attempt at mastery over the gods,
that seems to belong to some different dimension of our
life.

Accordingly the truth is missed when some special feeling
is believed to be religion's characteristic mark. Religion is

1 See Palmer's Introd. to Qur'an, p. xiii, and various passages in the
Koran itself. Sir Richard Burton's Pilgrimage is, of course, the classic
description in English.

2 Diary [1895], p. 99.

34 2 Psychology of the Religious Life

not identical with adoration, as some declare ; for spirits
and gods may receive, instead of adoration, trickery and
chastisement from their worshippers. Nor does it seem
at all times to be a ' solemn reaction,' as has been held ; for
light rejoicing may appear in worship. Nor is it certain
that the heart of religion is disclosed by calling it " awe
at the mysterious and unknown." Often it is such awe ;
and yet again the sense of mystery is almost if not wholly
wanting, and with full devotion there is a sense of security
and understanding entirely absent from the intercourse
with visible persons and things. Finally, the common trait
of faith cannot assuredly be found in the feeling of depend-
ence. It is true that a sense of dependence is frequent in
the religious life, as it is in the secular. All attachment to
what is without, all high value set upon something not our-
selves, means the giving of hostages. Whatever a man loves
he commits his happiness to, in degree according to the
depth of his affection. Those who withdraw within them-
selves— like the old poet who sings, " My mind to me a
kingdom is " — praise the serenity and independence of
their state. Some faiths, like Buddhism, are ever gospels
of ^dependence, of self-sanctification ; and although,
for the time, man is in the toils of the outer world and of
causal law, this upon which he transitorily depends is the
very fact toward which he is taught in such a faith to feel
no reverence whatsoever. Other religions have escaped the
sense of dependence in still another way. Instead of man's
fortune being at the mercy of those he worships, these draw
from him their very sustenance. The sacrifice is thought
to maintain the divine strength and power. Similarly
ancestors must have their due homage from the living
members of the family from generous regard for the departed,
lest, unsupported, the dead fall down to hell. Thus de-
pendence appears where no religion is, and departs without
taking homage with it, and cannot well be religion's un-
failing sign. And there seems little hope of discovering any
other feeling that always will be present.

Change and Permanence in the Ideal 343

If in the face of facts so obdurate, an attempt should
still be made, one might say that religion is the appreciation
of an unseen world, usually an unseen company ; and
religion is also whatever seems clearly to be moving
toward such an appreciation or to be returning from it.
Or, perhaps, it might better be described as man's whole
bearing toward what seems to him the Best, or Greatest —
where ' best ' is used in a sense neither in nor out of morality,
and ' greatest ' is confined to no particular region.

In any such attempt at definition, there is a certain
shameless disregard of the border where religion fades into
magic or into political respect or common social bonds ;
and while this takes from the appearance of the definition,
it may help its truth ; for the description should not be
much sharper than the facts. For it is a fact that religion
stands on common ground with much that is secular — with
loyalty of all kinds, friendship, regard for whatever is
delightful, intellectual search into things unknown — on
common ground even with appreciation that is not of love
alone, but of aversion ; having in it recoil and hatred, as
of what is ugly or menacing. No clear line marks the transi-
tion from religion to other human activities. Not simply
does worship fade insensibly into common life ; it overlaps
it, and there are large spaces that clearly belong to both.
The feelings of the patriot, the artist, the man of science
even, are not precisely described as on the border of religion ;
rather they are in part identical with the feelings of the
devout, although directed toward objects that differ from
those of religion. But since the object around which the
feeling plays is important and colours the feeling itself, the
total activity called zeal for science or devotion to an art
is not strictly religion, although having a religious ingre-
dient— as sea and sky are different, although much is
common to both.

In so far, then, as any interest or activity has features
that are also discernible in man's response to the apparent
Best, or in his appreciation of an unseen personal world,

344 Psychology of the Religious Life

this interest or activity overlaps religion. And this will
help one — if not to answer, at least not to be dismayed by —
those endless queries as to where, in early life, the name of
religion can truly be applied. In magic, for example, some
premonition of faith is present ; there is belief in some
unseen connection between events (as, indeed, in much of
our modern science), and there is confidence that by right
procedure their course can be controlled. But the unseen
connection is here not necessarily viewed as a connection
between conscious or personal beings, and the magician's
own attitude fails to suggest a relation to other persons.
The prime constituents of religion are here too diluted, if
traceable at all, to justify the use of its name for such
practices.

Fully as early as the appearance of magic, however, man
appreciates a conscious or personal world. He feels the
ties of family and of clan, he fears and fights both men and
beasts — for these, too, are broadly persons. And all of
this has much in common with early religion ; indeed, it
would be both right and wrong to say that here already
was its distant form. Still distant, too, although closer to
typical religion as regards the character of its objects, if
not as regards the feelings with which these are greeted, is
that attitude of man toward beings as though they were
conscious, when, according to our later science, no con-
sciousness there resides — stocks and stones, fountains and
rivers, wind and lightning, moon and sun. Although the
objects here appreciated are still seen, yet there is infused
into their visible character a hidden and conscious potency,
by a process which differs from that by which we believe
in the consciousness of our fellow-men, simply in that our
infusion of thought into these lifeless things seems to later
reason so unwarranted. To this intercourse with inanimate
things the term ' religion ' might be applied with more
truth than error. And when, by all those strengthening
influences that give reality to a realm of spirits set free
from the hard facts of sense, there comes distinct and im-

Change and Permanence in the Ideal 345

portant before us a society other than our normal visible
one, then religion has appeared unmistakably. A comple-
mental world of conscious beings now gives a separate
focus and fresh strength to those activities of appreciation
that run all through our secular life.

If this bare outline is at all correct, religion is the gradual
awakening to the weight and import of a peculiar order of
objects. The sense of value, of significance, has found a
new medium, a new direction. For a time this new world
which religion has discovered repeats, for the most part,
the broad features of familiar human life. But soon in
picturing the invisible world the colours of experience begin
to be applied with greater freedom. The mottled forms of
the spirit-realm show human traits exaggerated, and be-
come in many ways more impressive than mere men — in
appearance, in swiftness, in kindly or malevolent power.
Where every one that is outside the clan is presumably
hostile, and war so largely fills the mind, it is hardly sur-
prising that idealization tutored in such a school should
so often present the stranger-spirit in the form of idealized
ill-will, of malice become heroic. The Ideal is what pos-
sesses deepest significance, supreme in its mastery over all
our powers. And in selecting and perfecting the elements
to enter into the mental picture of the ideal, it is perhaps
only natural that the savage should often turn toward
the grotesque, the horrible, the devouring. For these un-
questionably are in many ways commanding, they stir to
life the feeling of importance, even though it be sinister ;
and, lifting men out of the dull commonplace of petty
planning, become distant and preparatory images of the
Ideal.

It is, perhaps, no less natural that man should also be
early impressed by goodwill, and should often permit this,
rather than malevolence, to rule his feeble powers of idealiza-
tion. For even savages imaginatively enlarge the outline
of human character into heroic proportions also on this
kindlier side. There are for them spirits and divinities who

346 Psychology of the Religious Life

do no harm, but only good. Very early, then, is seen some
half-waking sense of the importance of goodwill as well as
enmity ; and as man's appreciation becomes elevated and
his aim more surely fixed upon a peaceful and intelligent
life, this steadying love of what is civil has its effect upon
the image of the spirit-world and gives this an attempted
perfection in law and quiet dominion and understanding.
The gods possess all for which man longs — vigour and
happy enterprise and wisdom. In this is reached the flaw-
less completion not only of the outward character of man —
his knitted strength and movement — but of his whole
inner nature, seen in firm, kindly purpose and intelli-
gence.

But the higher our own attainment, the less are we
satisfied to represent the Best by something closely like
ourselves. What can suffice to be the figure of perfection
becomes with advance less entirely intimate with life. As
it is purified and exalted the ideal recedes, and with it the
divinity who is its definite embodiment. The growing
power of idealization itself in one of its activities thus makes
perfection seem far beyond this world. The strain so pro-
minent in high religion, by which the substance of things
hoped for appears remote and without feeling for our
nature, thus itself is from our nature, seeking far and wide
its own completion.

There is also a striving in the opposite direction. The
Ideal is the end and goal of man's own solemn purpose.
And not only does he put forth effort toward it, but he
feels its solicitation, its free constraint upon him. Love —
Eros, in the old story — is born of Plenty and Want ; and
the Ideal, formed to satisfy desire, shows man what he
possesses and what he lacks ; it witnesses to his present
nature as well as to that nature's further movement. Like
the flying arrow, man is both where he is and where he is
not. And since the image of the Perfect is a foreshadowing
of what the man believes to be most substantial and real
in the world, and yet is a deliverance of his own inner

Change and Permanence in the Ideal 347

nature, he cannot well escape some sense of his kinship
with perfection ; though it be a stern judge, it is of his
blood. The ideal is in touch with man's own surest impulses
and reinforces them while bringing them to order ; and
thus with all its transcendence it must, unless forcibly
prevented, be felt as coming near and having its place by
the very hearth of character.

The ideal in its personal form, as God, is therefore natively
both far and near — far, because infinitely apart from all
that mars our life ; near, because he moves in and through
our deepest promptings. That to which we look is of
glorified appearance, as to a lover's eyes, and far removed ;
but just because there is this adoration, man's fortune
and his God are eternally joined, and in the sure, mild
drawing of the distant Best the union is as real as the
separation.

But if, in the normal course, God is perceived to be both
near and far, this is not inevitable. The forces of attraction
and repulsion often are strangely proportioned. Where the
idealizing power is weak or unschooled, as in men of rudi-
mentary culture, the intimacy may leave almost nothing
of aloofness ; the gods may be little more than hewers of
wood and drawers of water for men, to be flogged and dis-
missed when they prove intractable. And even in our
modern cities the sublimity of the Divine seems occasionally
almost lost in easy and familiar intercourse.

Such extremity of nearness has its opposing counterpart
where the idealizing power attains a morbid excellence.
The ideal existence is now refined and sublimated until it
no longer holds — no longer awakens — the sense of affinity.
It becomes a mere wraith of what man is, or perhaps of
what he is not, and brings only chill instead of reinforce-
ment to the more enduring of our powers.

Variable as is the course of religion, there may already
have appeared, even in this scant account, certain traits
to serve for its identity. To some it may seem just if we
accept the expression used some moments past, that religion

348 Psychology of the Religious Life

is man's whole bearing toward the apparent Best or Greatest.
The wavering incongruities of reverence obtain in this a
kind of intelligibility : they are due to the measureless
variety of things which are most impressive for different
types and stages of mental growth, and to the great diversity
of response which this impressiveness evokes. Man in his
restless mental wandering finds all manner of objects that
seem for the time to be that Greatest for which he always
has a place prepared. At one time he discovers it in what
is immense in size ; and again, like the child, he feels even
more strongly the fascination, the significance, of little
things. Moreover, the tangle of human impulse and passion
brings it to pass that whatever seems most impressive is
received, here with fear, and there with confidence ; now
with cupidity, and again with unselfish gifts ; until, passing
through joy and sadness, action and repose, pictured and
imageless contemplation, the whole cycle of human powers
has been summoned forth by this meeting with the Great.

But in spite of the endless variety of things to which
humanity in its untiring eagerness gives recognition, there
runs a fairly constant impulse to regard the Greatest as
conscious, after some animal or human or divine manner.
And this at once makes for a certain deep-hidden similarity
in things worshipped, while the contrasts lie more upon the
surface. Indeed, it is not hard to observe, in the great
range of what is worshipped, that the outward diversity is
far greater than the inward. The difference between the
mind of beast and man and archangel is a difference long
but narrow, like that between seed and plant and tree ; and
bears no parallel to the infinite breadth and length of
difference in those objects — sunsets, justice, camels, kettles,
stars — that lie in the world of life and thought and things.
Minds contain or touch diversity, rather than are diverse.
And consequently the objects of worship are at once seen
to have narrower variations, when beneath their flaring
contrasts is so often found the common fact of consciousness,

Change and Permanence in the Ideal 349

dim or clear, with all its old familiarities. Like masquers
when the hour has struck, the well-known faces are no
longer hidden.

But while the Greatest is normally felt to be conscious,
the opposite may appear by exception. The doubt which
some have shared with Jowett, that consciousness or per-
sonality may possibly be but a form of limited existence
and therefore unfit to be an attribute of that perfect great-
ness which is infinitude — this uncertainty deepens into con-
viction with many worshippers, yet without destroying the
stern devotion to the Best, that makes their faith religious.
The extinction of selfhood, which is so often the goal of all
desire in Buddhist scripture — while felt by some to be the
extinction merely of selfishness — means with others the
utter passing away of conscious life, like a candle-flame
snuffed out. It would be interesting to determine whether
in this yearning for life's close, even when it is in honour of
no god, there may not still be a devotion unrecognized by
the worshipper himself, to some characterless form of con-
sciousness. The honour paid the self is quite apparent :
by one's inherent power the escape from life and evil is to
be accomplished. And with the strictest denial of the last
trace of consciousness when Nirvana is attained, there is
desired perhaps, by a kind of paradox, the consciousness,
the felt relief and bliss, of non-existence, rather than non-
existence pure and absolute. A dim, uncircumscribed
psychic life that is neither mine nor thine would thus per-
sist hidden in the ideal.

If this is avoided by the more consistent, and the last
glimmer of consciousness, and indeed of reality in any form,
fades from the ideal, religion loses a most important and
characteristic mark, so far as its Object is concerned, while
still retaining a religious feature in the attitude of the wor-
shipper. Reverence continues ; a Best and Greatest is still
conceived and honoured ; but all the forms of reality actual
orjmaginable are felt to be unworthy of being called by its
name. The Supreme is described throughout by negatives

350 Psychology of the Religious Life

and by removing it to the uttermost from all those attri-
butes which enter into reality as known to us.

It is possible to regard this type of religion as an after-
glow in the heart when the object of devotion has disap-
peared entirely from the intellectual view. The impulse to
value life — to feel the importance especially of men and all
that is manlike — is too deep in us by birth and training to
be easily uprooted. An impulse so habitual, so profound,
will of necessity continue by sheer momentum, even should
all outward occasion be removed or inwardly denied.
However illogical, it is not foreign to the mind to have
objectless reverence, any more than to have objectless
dread. There is here a curious truncation of the sentiment
of worth — the continuation of its form and habits, but with
protest all the while that no real and final worth can any-
where be found. And in particular all worth is denied to
the mind ; upon which, so far as science can help us to see,
all appreciation, all value in anything, all outward justifica-
tion as well as inward prompting to esteem, must finally
rest. And yet in such anomaly of faith, with its recogni-
tion of a Greatest that cannot exist, there goes a strange
depth of feeling, an intent reflection which, if it might be
transferred, would enrich many a religion that in other ways
is already so much richer.

In thinking of religion as our response to that which thus
far has revealed itself to us as greatest, as of most value or
significance, there is no need that this should imply single-
ness. A little logic might give the impression that the Best
must needs be one and alone ; but the best, as it appears to
us, may be a group of beings, a class, a society. In the
worship of the Olympians, Zeus was often spoken of as su-
preme ; and yet here, as in so many religions of this poly-
theistic kind, the whole company of the immortals was
felt to be needed to exemplify the supremely great, each
member adding some unique quality. Zeus, it is true, was
mightiest ; but without Athene and Apollo and all the
other companions of his court, he would have seemed shorn

Change and Permanence in the Ideal 351

of his strength and splendour. Their presence and even
opposition completed the picture. So the best, here and
often elsewhere, lies in an unstudied composition of many
parts, and not in some separate one, even though this be
chief.

And finally there is no right occasion to identify that
which man feels to be most significant with the Infinite.
There often is a groping for the limitless, and men have
shown indecision as to what is the best example and em-
bodiment of this limitless or infinite. With some it is the
sky as a manifestation of spatial endlessness ; while others
look to the weight and immensity of the physical All, or to
Mind or Reason as the least hampered side of personality.
Or finally the Infinite is found in some unimaginable exist-
ence or lack of existence, higher than all these and free from
their confinement. But this is the habit only of certain
minds. Their neighbours give no signs of searching for the
boundless, but turn from these too expansive things toward
what is more within the compass of their sympathies, to be
in some way subdued by trees or animals or individual men.
Certain types of mind, indeed, throughout have felt the
attractiveness of the limited. The child, with its native
wonder and joy in the diminution of things perhaps more
than in their enlargement, hints at a real and important
trend even in religion. Men of logic and mathematics and
philosophy, esteeming what is limitless and absolute ab-
stractly, have much to answer for, because they have con-
fused our natural sense of value. For if by the Ideal we
mean what is most deeply satisfying and admirable, there
is no necessity that this should display extraordinary
quantity or exclude existence outside itself. We may freely
go with the old-time Bishop of Canterbury in saying that
God is that Being than which a greater cannot be thought.
But the greatness seems to be lessened rather than in-
creased by a too intemperate insistence on quantitative
infinitude ; just as a face or gem could not, without loss of
its own peculiar charm, be endlessly increased in size. It

352 Psychology of the Religious Life

is true that as the critical power advances, infinitude does
not of necessity mean mere space-extent or unlimited force,
but, often, an all-inclusiveness, an absolute unity that ex-
cludes all other free existence. Still it is possible that per-
fection may even in this find its defeat, rather than its ful-
filment. If so, it would not be difficult for some to decide
that perfection without infinitude would seem more in keep-
ing with their idea of the Divine, than would infinitude that
fell short of perfect admirableness. Accordingly it would,
perhaps, be truer to say that religion is the effort to main-
tain communion, not with the infinite, but with that which
possesses supreme worth — which is, perhaps, but a deeper
kind of infinitude. Through uncertain ways man stumbles
forward to meet supremacy, misled often, and blind to the
true nature of its credentials. Yet in all his wanderings, he
renders homage to some portion or distant representative
of what is eminent, since that uncommon and profound
Perfection, which alone is greatest and best, can without
deceit and without shadow of turning appear to men in
various forms.

CHAPTER XXV

STANDARDS OF RELIGION

WHEN we review the various forms in which men think
of divinity and express their reverence, we involun-
tarily ask, " Which of these is better, and which worse ? " —
a question difficult of answer, and carrying the mind at once
beyond the interest and method thus far followed, where we
attempt merely to observe and explain. To consider such
a question at all will need from the reader that grant of
freedom which, at the beginning of this study, it was said
would be asked at the close. And even then an effort should
be made, perhaps, not so much to give a definite and direct
answer to the question, as to offer some of the standards for
judging rival forms of religion and to show something of their
application — standards that seem closest to the psycholo-
gical facts, amongst which our course has lain.

And first would come this, that the pure and continued
expression of any single religious motive is not desirable.
For, indeed, religious motives, like muscles, work best in
opposition. The evidence has perhaps made it clear that
certain antagonistic forces exist in the very nature of
reverence itself, and that there is often a wild excess when
one of these opposite strivings frees itself, by a kind of
violence, from its opponent. When other things are equal,
religions will prove acceptable according to the measure
in which they avoid such excess by retaining a vigorous
check and antagonism among their energies. Yet such
a thought should be supplemented at once, inasmuch as
2 A 353

354 Psychology of the Religious Life

while retaining each and both of two opposing motives,
one motive may well be dominant.

In accord with these two principles, we should look for
a fine inner adjustment when religion is at its best. Its
followers will display — to be more definite — neither un-
mixed scorn nor unmixed approval of the self, but a certain
blend of self-reliance and distrust. For while the contem-
plation of the ideal brings humility, for no flesh may glory
in its presence, yet the sense that upon us in some measure
depends its realization, gives us even in our own eyes
an added dignity. With the disappointment felt toward
themselves that so little has yet been accomplished, men
will value their better elements, they will rejoice in the self
that is to be ; they will be eager to form the self of failure
according to the self that is foretold.

Yet the follower of such a religion will regard as a bane
any absorption of interest in the self ; he will look outward
chiefly, and here, too, with a nice interplay of feelings,
with sympathies at once universal and exacting. All men
will be seen as kindred, as fellows, yet with some measure of
that deep regret to which his own self moves him. In
feeling bound to all, he will not keep back his anger toward
those who obstinately check the coming of the good. Sym-
pathy and aversion will be proportioned to the degree in
which, deep within men, is found the will to become citizens
of an unseen land. Sympathy and shrewd hopefulness,
however, will dominate ; and so the wide survey that in-
cludes what is outward and within, what is actual and what
hoped for, will bring neither despair nor gaiety, but a
mellowed gladness, as in listening to solemn music.

Our canons, moreover, with their inherent temperance,
will claim approval in so far as religion holds a mid-course
between extreme acceptance of the world and extreme re-
nunciation. Such a religion, rejecting the maxim ' Whatever
is, is right/ acknowledges a diabolic strain in this world, and
yet will not think of desertion after any manner even dis-
tantly resembling seclusion in a monastery or flight to the

Standards of Religion 355

desert. It believes that the good must be realized by co-
operation and human society, even with all its noisy and
distracting institutions. The world is of the right stuff,
but of wrong arrangement. And thus by approving and
denouncing with a sharply dividing mind, the impulses of
acceptance and rejection that are so ready each to expel
the other and bring mischief work in harmony for high ends.

Our normal religion, that accepts the world and yet
accepts it as a place wherein is to be realized a world of
another order, feels the call to action. But it is not a
partisan of action that is purely expressive and unuseful,
or that is expressive only in being useful. It finds room for
acts both ritual and utilitarian. The passion of loyalty will
naturally be expressed in religion, as elsewhere, not alone
by prudent labour, but by acts that have no end beyond
mere utterance — like the patriot's honour to the flag, or
the lover's bringing of a garland.

Its restraint, furthermore, will not allow such a religion
to lose itself in activity even of varied kinds, but balances
action with reception. Along with life and conduct in a
world of turmoil, there must be what the anchorite seeks,
but seeks too externally — an untroubled solitude whence
the spirit issues refreshed for duty. The high qualities of
those who seek to correct their busy service with passivity
cannot well be hid. Such a spirit often goes with a serenity
of temper as of men who feel that divine things enfold
human life. In itself it too often is an exaggeration, but
exaggeration of an element that men need. For in the
main, religion has not suffered most from disregard of things
external ; the constant menace has certainly not been that
worship would become too refined, too much a matter of
the heart, too desirous of inner light and leading. Thus
the failing of those who turn away from action leans to
virtue's side. Everyone can act, as everyone can^talk ;
listening is the rarer talent. But as he makes a poor com-
panion who can only listen, so the receptive, the apprecia-
tive attitude, even toward the Ideal, is not of itself ideal.

356 Psychology of the Religious Life

A religion, thus catholic by its acceptance both of activity
and of its rival, contemplation, should be catholic further
in its bearing toward the different forms of contemplation, by
whose guidance it would have all acts performed. It will
acknowledge the high office of that kind of thought, intuitive
and revealing, that flows in upon and floods the mind
when this seems passive ; but it will acknowledge the power
and privilege also of that other kind of thought, cautious
and laboured, that tests itself untiringly by logic and ex-
perience. Indeed, the course of events clearly points to a
time when disregard of common knowledge and intelligence
will seem as repugnant to the religious mind as disregard of
common morals. For just as religion was long separate from
duty to one's f ellows, and only gradually did the feeling come
that manly honour was as important to the gods as cere-
monial ; so the separation of knowledge sharply into spiritual
and secular, into the higher wisdom and the wisdom that
grows of observation and by sympathy with the aims of
one's fellow-men, has long continued, but is losing ground.
Science, we may expect, will in this gradual way become a
part of religion, and then it will be required of us to repent
of our ignorance and fallacious thought as now of theft
or slander. If some, because they are encouraged to ply
their powers and look about them, lose their way or forget
the goal, this is no excuse for leading all men blindfold by
the hand. A certain not-too-timid prudence is here the
better part, throwing men more upon their own resources
and responsibility, being reconciled to see some receive
injury lest the injury to many be far greater. Human
reason and human learning are thus admitted to a high
place in loyalty, yet without expelling all that does not
bear the mark of intellect.

But cognition, as we found, exhibits still other inner
rivalries than that between intuitive and critical thinking ;
and of these, also, our adopted norms of religion urge a
reconciliation. There should be a place for many styles and
aids of knowledge — for the representation of duty and

Standards of Religion 357

divinity not alone by imageless and abstract conception,
but also by the imageless, yet no longer abstract, experi-
ence from within. They should be represented even by
the suggestive power of the fancy, as well as of physical
symbols and symbolic action.

And justice should be done not simply to the rival modes
of thinking, but also to thought's rival products. The op-
posing motives that clamour to dominate conduct and
man's feeling toward himself and his surroundings, reap-
pear augmented to claim control of his conception of God.
But by holding them in mutual restraint, well-ordered
religion believes in a divinity that is definite in outline and
yet endlessly rich ; that is known and at the same time
exceeds our knowledge ; a divinity whose purposes and
sympathies extend infinitely beyond us, while enfolding
and penetrating our being. There is an effort, in all of this,
to possess the better elements both of monotheism and of
polytheism. For the monotheist is apt to overprize the
mere unity in his Ideal, forgetful that unity, if it grow too
great, is tyrannous. Moral dignity, unswerving sympathy,
and justice are, after all, more important elements in the
divine conception ; and we may better believe in these
great qualities, though vested in many gods, than adopt a
monotheism that leaves them out. Indeed, more than once
in history a divine unity and concord has been attained at
a cost of human colour and the rich play of interest and
feeling. Polytheism makes sure of just such qualities ; and
if, in holding them fast, it holds fast much that is un wor-
shipful— ugliness, often, and treachery and low passion —
this must not blind us to the importance of the principle
for which polytheism stands. The Ideal is not merely a
unity ; it is quite as much a wealth and a diversity. So
that Triune monotheism might be looked upon, perhaps,
as a measure of religious self-protection. It is an anchor
cast to windward, lest the drift toward unity wreck the
very conception of the Ideal. There is an insistence both
on the divine unity and on the divine manifoldness — often,

358 Psychology of the Religious Life

it is true, at a cost of great inward distress as to the means
of their reconciliation, but guided all the while by a right
instinct not to let some one abstract element in the Ideal
dominate and exclude the rest. Those opposing tendencies
of thought, which at first seem irreconcilable and to be
taken singly or not at all, are thus manfully conjoined.

The supreme virtue of thought, however, is not its
balance and vigour and richness, but its veracity. Accord-
ingly a third rule to guide our judgment may be that the
assertions of religion, as to what is real, should be true. And
this at once brings us to a distant region where we are met
by Pilate's question ; and also by the thought that it is
not the office of religion to know, but only to be loyal —
that, if there are avenues to truth, they lie not in religion,
but in science and philosophy. Such troubling doubts and
denials can, I believe, be downed by no demonstration.
The most that here will be attempted will be to present
with the least of argument what seems a juster view.

The point from which we must start is, I believe, that
there are several varieties of truth. There are, for ex-
ample, the expedient beliefs of the pragmatist — judgments
that are serviceable and yet describe no existent fact. Such
was Malebranche's idea of the verite in the reports of the
senses. There is, beside this, a truth of mere consistency,
such as we have in branches of mathematics where, upon
assuming certain relations, others follow by a logical com-
pulsion. Somewhat distinct from this, and yet not entirely
so, lies the region of value, of worth — where we affirm what
is consistent, not with certain bare intellectual relations, as
in mathematics, but with deep needs and impulses of our
nature other than pure intellect. Finally there are the
truths of fact, of reality ; as when memory tells me of
the events of yesterday, or I look out and see that the
day is drawing to a close, or look within and find misgiving
or cheer. There is, in all these, some picture or representa-
tion of actual existence — a kind of truth kindred to the
others, but also different.

Standards of Religion 359

Religion, I believe, is concerned with this full and varied
nature of truth. The worshipper, when his faith is at its
best, believes usefully, and in all consistency, and with a
just sense of relative values. But were his hold upon truth
only of these ; were truth no longer trustworthy also as an
expression of fact, the mind uncorrupted by learning would
feel that the very life had gone from thought and inter-
course. ' Is friendship," one would ask, " nothing but
loyalty to a goal ? Is not my love for my friend robbed
of its very meaning, however much might remain of inner
ministry and gratification, when it ceases to be a thing of
value for him as well as for me ? My belief in him is not
a mere expression of respect for an idea helpful to me and
self-consistent, but of an idea picturing a fact, a solid
reality, namely another person, with sympathies like my
own ! ' In the same manner religion feels itself concerned
with a larger world, not existent merely in idea, but potent
and actual. Man's relation to that world may as yet be
insufficient ; there is much that is existent merely in hope
and in idea ; yet the basic fact of some great reality, that is
capable of coming into closer relation with humanity, is
the confident belief of the reverent. Whether the belief be
well or ill-grounded is surely a concern of religion. For
worship, it makes a wide difference whether reality shall
actually prove to be of one character rather than another.
Religion, therefore, is interested not simply in being loyal,
but in knowing what it is loyal to ; indeed, in knowing
whether the universe is such that sincere and abounding
loyalty is possible.

But what of the sources from which the truth, of such
deep concern to religion, is derived ? Shall we say that
sound religion will lay no claim to special knowledge ; that
it will gladly see a division of employments, and receive
its truth wholly from science and philosophy, having as its
peculiar care simply the worship of the reality which these
disclose ?

In answer, there might be stated the fourth of our canons,

360 Psychology of the Religious Life

that religion is justified in taking part in the discovery of the
truth ; and that a religion shall not be valued in propor-
tion to its own sense of inability to know. The considera-
tions that seem to make this not unreasonable have some
range, and will demand of the reader, for their hearing, a
store of patience.

There are several great activities, or interests, each with
a claim to examine and report upon the character of reality
— claiming, if not an exclusive power to reveal what is real,
at least a power supplemental to that of its fellows. Each
of these great interests stirs the mind to dissatisfaction
with the facts at hand, and urges it to correct the impres-
sion which they make. The real world, each in its own
way prompts us to believe, is different from the world
directly observed ; and by bringing into order the chaos of
things presented by eye and ear, there is an attempt to
quiet our deep unrest. The idealizing act, as an earlier
chapter showed, is impelled by many needs and desires.
And some of these will now be spoken of again, but no longer
as of influence merely in fact, but of influence by right and
to be fostered.

The need of explanation and the effort made by the
scientist to satisfy that need comes at once to mind. But
largely because the work of explanation is so familiar, and
because the satisfaction which it offers is so prized, the very
character of scientific labour is readily misunderstood. For
in the study of nature there is far less of mere passive record
and far more of imaginative rearrangement than the lay
mind is accustomed to believe. He looks upon the scientific
procedure as something rigorous and demonstrable at every
point. Each step, he feels, is checked and verified, and
under all is a wide and sure foundation of fact observed.
There is much to warrant a confidence such as this. And
yet, the more the structure of science is scrutinized, the
more is there seen to enter into it a certain confidence, never
fully justified by experience itself, that there are causes

Standards of Religion 361

everywhere, regular antecedents for every possible event.
Actual observation has found such causes ^only within
narrow limits ; and even these are discovered only by
assuming in every observation the truth of the very prin-
ciple which the observation seems to verify. Deep within
us is the desire for causal explanation ; and largely because
we are ill at ease until this desire is gratified we come at last
to believe unhesitatingly in that kind of universe which
alone makes explanation possible.

It is therefore a mistake to imagine that in the scientific
approach to truth nothing is taken for granted, and that
reality itself is passively received in the form in which it is
imprinted on the senses. On the contrary, scientific labour
is always a sifting and rearranging and supplementing of
what the senses offer ; a rearrangement and supplementing
that is guided by the special ideal and assumption of a
world that is perfectly intelligible causally. Our belief that
everything we observe has a universe or system of things
behind it, all whose parts and processes are connected in
accord with precise and universal rules — this is not a belief
which can be proved by observation and experiment. It is
not a discovery ; it is a principle of discovery. We accept
its truth ; we believe that the world is causally intelligible ;
and guided by this belief the world of what is real begins to
appear in outline before our minds. And this outline is far
larger than the mere mass and sum of what we actually see.

But further than this, the mind is logically restless. The
judgments suggested by our observations of fact are felt to
be intellectually unsatisfying ; they are felt to clash and
to be in need of a setting, a background, not so much to
cause as to justify them. They presuppose other judg-
ments, and so the intellect revises and adds, in an attempt
to satisfy this craving for a better object of thought than
what is directly before us. All men are subject to this
strange impulse of reason ; but only the specialist, the
logician, knows its refinements and has leisure and skill for
its full play. In all, save those who are schooled to doubt,

362 Psychology of the Religious Life

there is a common confidence that the world is logically
complete and consistent ; that it answers to the demands of
reason. Were we ever to master its details, we believe, the
world of entire reality would appear not merely a causal,
but also a rational, order.

If we may name next a need and impulse which to many
within the schools would seem of less moment, it would be
that of beauty. In reaching toward the world that is true
and real, there is always a hidden suggestion that it will
satisfy a certain craving for the impressive and the delight-
ful. Such a longing may be rebuked or even smothered,
but in the unschooled man, and in most men with all their
schooling, it lives on, often their ruling instinct. As in an
account of a man's life that was not a satire, few could
endure to have equal weight given to all the facts — being
told which shoe he put on first, and at which end he broke
his morning egg, in as grave detail as of his election to
Congress or his first battle — but should feel how insufferable
was its disregard of dramatic needs : so, in a larger and wider
way, we are influenced in our view of the world as a whole.
In the work of rearranging and supplementing the crude
impressions we receive, in order to bring before our minds
the world which we will acknowledge real, there is the steady
expectation and desire that in this true and real world the
fragments of experience will be so united and framed that
all will appear fair. Such a motive is of deep effect upon
our judgment of truth. It cautions us here and nods en-
couragingly there. And so we may say that beauty, too,
with all its silent ways, is a principle of discovery. Some
day its prophet will appear ; but until then, we must name
it with less assurance than we do causality and the prin-
ciple of sufficient reason ; for it seems less authoritative,
less definite in its decisions. Yet there is the constant quiet
intimation that, with all its other completeness, the world
is also cesthetically satisfying ; that were the whole before
us in a vision, this would be beatific, the world would appear
of perfect beauty.

Standards of Religion 363

Finally there is a need, deeper, I believe, than any yet
named, the need of sympathy, and of full companionship.
And like the other needs, it, too, brings its own great belief,
that the world is morally harmonious. Such a belief is no less
widespread than that of causal regularity ; it is of as
ancient lineage ; it subdues the mind to no less obedience.
And as the causal, logical, and aesthetic principles drive us
to supplement what is given through eyes and ears, by
building behind and around it an ampler world — a world
which we know only through intermediaries but which
we cannot doubt, since it alone makes our sense-reports
coherent — so we are urged to accept still another guide in
this work of bringing into order our sense impressions.
There is something that tells us to connect and surround the
fragments of experience in such wise that the whole will
answer to the moral impulse. Shut within our little cell of
self we cannot see that the whole is moral, more than we
can see that it is beautiful or reasonable or that it furnishes
a causal explanation of all we experience. As with these
other beliefs, so with this ; its hold upon us is dispropor-
tionate to the evidence which can be offered in its support.
Indeed, there is nothing, either in observation or in argu-
ment, that well can prove it. If we will not believe, there
is no recourse ; no one can demonstrate to us that morality
runs through the universe, more than that causation runs
through all. If accepted, however, the moral principle leads
to a more spacious world, as does the causal principle.
Whatever is needed causally to explain my sensations is as
real for me as are they ; and likewise, whatsoever is abso-
lutely needed to make my experience morally intelligible I
shall hold to, as having the solid reality of experience itself.

But lest the moral principle seem too insecure and airy
thus to be placed amongst the guides of our intelligence, it
should be said that under its leadings there is room and
demand for the utmost critical care. Just as the belief in
causation does not leave us a prey to every whimsy, nor
offer a substitute for careful scrutiny ; just as it does not

364 Psychology of the Religious Life

tell us what is the cause of a given occurrence, but bids us
find it, giving us but the emptiest form of events, and
requiring us to use all manner of patient checks and cor-
rections before deciding what is the actual system of events
that fills this form, so the acceptance of the moral principle
does not of itself reveal what, in all definiteness, that moral
world is, but demands of us observation and critical cunning
before we decide wiiat is the concrete system of fact that
meets this high demand for perfect comradeship.

Furthermore, the moral principle does not point to truth
quite beyond the limits of observation, in the religious region
merely. It is demonstrably at work in shaping for us the
world of everyday reality. Were it not for its prompting,
there is no compulsive reason, according to our present
knowledge, for believing in the existence of other minds. If
in fashioning our idea of the world, we were to surrender
ourselves wholly to the scientific spirit ; making no assump-
tion that was not absolutely needed to explain, getting our
facts into the snuggest possible arrangement, never multi-
plying essences beyond bare causal necessity — if we were
to accept without shadow of reserve this rigid scientific
method, each, so far as we now can see, would rest convinced
that his was the only mind in the universe. Our friends
that now are would then be for us mere bodies governed
by curious laws of reflex or other physiological action ;
unconscious automata, the products of natural selection or
of whatever other physical mechanism we might accept.
Everything in the observed facts themselves could thus be
adequately explained. For I cannot perceive the mental
portion of my neighbour, nor is this absolutely required to
account for his physical behaviour, which I can observe.
Indeed, in a theory of the relation of mind and body which
has proved acceptable to many — the theory of ' parallelism '
— mind is of no service whatsoever in accounting for the
body's action. Since we should thus have far less to explain
and what remained would be far simpler of explanation, the
purely scientific problems would be greatly simplified were

Standards of Religion 365

I to suppose that the world held but myself as its single
centre of thought and will.

Yet every sane mind rejects such a view. And why ?
Because the social, the moral instincts are outraged by it.
" We demand more than explanation," they cry ; " more
than a world that can cause things. Ours must be a world
wherein there is mutual recognition, mutual regard. An
ineradicable sense of the value of others requires that they,
too, be real." This conviction, then, scientifically so un-
called-for, that in addition to my own mind and the physical
world about me, there are companions as real as myself,
illustrates the manner in which the utterances that spring
from explanatory needs may be insufficient, and receive
supplement from a moral source.

The enlargement of the universe according to the ways
of religion is, in the main, but a further yielding to this
rightful impulse. As we will not rest content with things,
but require the company of human minds ; so, in turn, we
look toward something more significant even than our
fellow-men. The world most real, so the reverent generally
believe, is such that it satisfies the demand of the spirit for
full intercourse.

There seems good reason to accept this principle, as one
among several great guides to what is real. Nor upon
acceptance of it is our liberty of judgment wholly gone. We
still are free to reject any particular description of that deep
reality ; we may point out wherein it fails to meet the re-
quirements of true reverence and intercourse. But we
cannot, I believe, rightly hold that the requirement itself
is illusory ; we cannot say that in the very undertaking to
represent a form of reality answering such a requirement
religion has transgressed. Religion, too, has a voice in
determining truth. It has a right, with art and science and
philosophy, to express its peculiar need. And the intelligent
thought of mankind will, in the end, regard as partial, and
will attempt to correct, any view of the world that fails to
satisfy this need. Religion, therefore, must hold that

366 Psychology of the Religious Life

Divinity sustains the world, looking upon men with perfect
understanding. Such a conviction will be surrendered for
one, if possible, still richer morally ; but never for a belief
that leaves the mind forever estranged and desolate.

One might close with this attempt to state some of the
proper standards for ascribing excellence to religion — its
need of bringing many clashing impulses into vigorous
order ; its need of truth, and of partaking in the work of
judging what is true. Yet it is hard to restrain a back-
ward glance that will now make doubly clear the way we
have come.

The scientific interest in religion leads deep into human
nature, where the observer's sight at best must grow con-
fused with the multitude of things seen in a half-light that
passes into darkness. But not only is the object of our study
almost unmatched in its obscurity, but it is now apparent
that the method here employed is incapable, even were it
used with skill, of bringing to view the total truth. We
have been yielding ourselves to the explanatory impulse
and to the special rules that have come to govern it. The
religious ideal and all the other expressions of devotion
have been spoken of throughout as though their full account
might be found among purely natural influences. It is
part of the scientific procedure to seek for its peculiar kind
of explanation in the region of observed events alone ; and
there has been no attempt, except at the very close, to
exceed this special method. And yet there cannot longer
be any illusion as to this particular way. For even if the
scientific purpose could be accomplished, and the presence
and character of the Ideal and all man's devotion to it could
be explained naturally and with perfect accuracy, this
would not imply that no other mode of regarding it were
reasonable.

The attempt to explain psychologically the religious life,
and especially the vision of the Ideal, will, if this be borne
in mind, hardly seem an effort to explain it away and to

Standards of Religion 367

destroy its claim to men's fidelity. Indeed, the truer in-
sight into the scientific method must restore, rather than
weaken, our confidence in the leading of perfection. Science,
as we have seen, must itself proceed by trusting the truth
of an ideal — that the world is a perfect order causally —
and this ideal, too, as reflected in men's minds, has its own
history and causes, the discovery of which does not destroy
the truth of that reflection. The orderliness of the world
is a perpetual fact although the idea of order is itself of
historic growth and is scientifically explicable. To explain
science itself by mental impulse and desire would be no
evidence that its ideal were purely in us, and without
external correspondence.

Likewise the discovery of the natural causes of religion
would not imply that its ideal world had no reality save in
men's thought — that something corresponding to our idea
of the Best had no interest in gradually awakening its own
image and desire in men. The dim and broken image of
perfection may well be formed in sympathy and correspon-
dence with a Perfection that is most real. Nor does the evi-
dence that this image in us has its outer counterpart depend
on some gap or error in the scientific explanation, nor be-
come weak as the scientific explanation gains in strength.
The truth may well be, that those definite causes which
work lawfully, as science would describe, in our mental life
and in external nature and by intercourse with other men,
are themselves sanctioned by the Best, as the means by
which its own outline shall gradually appear in the clouded
minds of men. The dawning appearance would then be
entirely natural and yet desired by the Good, and thus be
intelligible in two entirely different ways, each without inner
flaw or weakness.

INDEX

Abecedarians, 66

Abstentions, 63 ff.

Acceptance of the World, 66 ff.

Action, conflicts in regard to, Chs.
VIII-XII, 133 ff. ; and inaction,
Ch. XI, 164 ff. ; rival influences
upon, Ch. X, 154 ff. ; originality
and imitation in, 154 f. ; effect
of mental limit and expanse
upon, 159 f. ; opposite values
assigned to, 160 ff. ; ascribed
and denied to God, 160 ff. ;
need of, 355

Acts, 290

Aesthetic impulse, 62, 362

Agni, 6, 223, 231

Ahura Mazda, 289

Allah, 213, 289

Amazulu, 291 ff.

American Indians ; v. Indians,
American

Ames, 319

Analects, 148

Ancestors, cult of, 51

Appreciative vs. creative spirit,
154 ff.

Art and religion, 15, 211

Arval Brothers, song of, 156

Arab, religion of the, 31 f., 213,
261 ; v. Mohammedanism

Asceticism, 63 ff. ; connected with
sensuality, 73 f. ; motives in,

75 *.

Asoka's edict, 54
Assemblies, excitement of, 115 f.
Associations, 40 f., 47
Assur-bani-pal, prayer of, 314
Atharva-Veda, 134
Athenaeus, 98

Augustine, 47, 228 f., 249 f.
Avataras, 278
Avesta ; v. Zend-Avesta

Babylonian religion, 262, 271,
277 f., 293, 304

2 B 3-9

Bancroft, E., 6, in

Bancroft, H. H., 12, 73, 263, 291

Bastian, 112, 114

Beauty, 81, 118, 362

Belief, influence of feeling on, 125!;

expressed in myth, 193 ff. ; place

of, in religion, Ch. XV, 213 ff. ;

divided self in, 214; kinds of,

215 ; vs. creed, 215 f.
Bernau, 77
Beverley, no
Bhagavadgita, 28, 35, 45, 51, 70,

108, 147, 170, 198, 199, 223, 224,

294. 295. 3°5. 3*6
Bhakti, 107
Biard, 14
Bigelow, 169, 266
Binet, 176!
Birth, second, 25
Bishop, 258
Boas, 41, 158

Body, distrust of the, 84 ff.
Boehme, 243 f .
Book of the Dead, 3, 9, 17 f., 35, 46,

114, 144, 225, 263, 269, 292, 315
Bowdich, 101
Bowen, 312, 319
Brahma, 294
Brahmin, 53 f., 69
Buddhism, 7, 24 f., 32 f., 34, 40, 42,

45, 52, 53 f- 65, 70, 79 f., 85,

93 ff., 106, 159 f., 180, 181, 183,

197, 199 ff.
Budge, 144
Burton, 341

Callaway, 292, 306

Calvinism, 30, 162

Campbell, 54

Castren, 276

Catholicism, its prayers for the

dead, 50 ; sympathy of, 53 ;

imagery in, 225
Catlin, 6, 64, 113
Causes, knowledge of, 194 f., 209, 270

370

Index

Ceremonial, inner supports of,
133 ft.; instances of, 137 f . ;
motives behind, 144; in
America, 150

Chamisso, 123

Change, love and dislike of, 182 f. ;
184 ; and permanence in Ideal,
Ch. XXIV, 339 ff.

Charities, 153

Cheer in religion, Ch. V, 89 ff.

Chronicles, 137

Chinese, religion of, vii, 13, 16, 19,
28, 54, 64, 81, 89, 123, 134, 144,
147 f., 151, 157, 171 ff., 179,
213 f., 224, 268, 298, 306, 313,
320

Christianity, 10 f., 25, 27, 36, 41,

43 f-. 50, 53 f-. 7° ff-. 85, 90, 107,
149, 160, 196 f., 263, 309 ff., 320

Chuang Tzu, 28 f., 179, 182 f.

Church, effect of membership in,
41 ; moral expense and income
of, 57 f. ; thought vs. imagina-
tion in, 241

Cieza de Leon, 78, 261, 271, 291

Coit, 145

Conceptions, 250

Confessions, 215 f.

Conflict, expression of, viii f., 3 ff. ;
in idealization, 328 ff.

Confucianism, vii, 13, 64, Si, 89,

I23> *34. *44. I48» ^i, 157. !72.
224, 268, 313, 320;

Conquest, effect of, 271, 280 f.

Conscience, 32, 282

Conservatism, secular and religious,

157
Contradictions, joy in, 16 ; as

stimulants, 19 ; in canon, 231 ff.
Corinthians, 107, 222
Coudreau, 78
Creation, 161, 314 ff.
Creeds, 215 ff.
Crevaux, 77
Cromer, 46, 67
Cronia, 98
Cruelty, 15, 48, 124

Daevas, u

Dal ton, 100

Damnation, 33

Dance, 113

Daniel, vision of, 222

Darmesteter, 143, 152

Davenport, 66, 115, 120

Davids, Rhys, 24, 34

Davidson, 29

Dead, prayers for, 50

Dennison, 307

Dependence, 34 f., 342

Depravity, doctrine of, 25

Desiderate portrayal, 253, 255 f.

Deuteronomy, 139

Devil, 6, 7, n

Diads, 274

Dio Chrysostom, 98

Disposition, emotional, 102 f.

Distant places, feeling in regard tof

13 f-

Divination, 165 ff.

Doctrine and feeling, 26
Do-Nothing sect, 172
Double personality, 37
' Doubles,' 266, 268
Doukhobors, 157, 169
Dreams, 167, 266
Drinks, intoxicating, iogf.
Drugs, intoxicating, noff.
Dubois, 65, 73, 100, 306

Ecclesiastes, 44

Edda, 45

Education, religious, 217

Egyptians, religion of, 3, 9, n, 17 f.,
35, 46, 85 f., 225, 263, 268, 269,
292

Elijah, 340

Ellis, 306

Elohim, 263

Emotion, alternation of, 96 ; sup-
pression and intensifying of, Ch.
VI, 105 ff. ; as sign of inspira-
tion, 1 08 ff. ; as means of com-
munion, 109 ff. ; difference of
sects in regard to, 117 ; in
mystics, 197 ; in portrayal,
251 ff. ; effect of, 281 ff.

Empsychosis, 246 ff .

Enquiry, impiety of, 207 f.

Ephesians, 1 1

Epithet, religious, vs. story, 238 ff.

Eremites, 40

Established religion, 89 f.

Eternity of gods, contradiction re-
garding, 236 f.

Etiquette and rite, 145

Evesham, Monk of, 47, 197, 222

Evil, 3, 5 ff., 91 f., 92, 262, 302 f.

Excesses, 97 ff., 101 ff.

Excitability from self-denial, 82 f.

Index

Extinction, desire for, 93

Exodus, 222

Explanation, interest in, 192 ; vs.

reverence, 208 ff. ; effect of, on

pantheon, 270
Ezekiel's vision, 222

Farnell, 304

Fasting, 63 f., 81

Fear, savage, 96 f.

Feeling, conflicts in regard to, Chs.
I-VII, 23 ff. ; vs. intellect, 26 ;
wider connections of, Ch. VII,
117 ff. ; secular and religious,
compared, 119 ff. ; selfish and
unselfish, 122 ; value of, 125 ff. ;
inevitable, 128 ; as a fetter, 175 ;
opposite effects of, on action,
186 ; vs. thought, 209 ; diffi-
culty of identifying religious,

Feminine element in religion, 155
Finns, religion of, 9 f., 17, 18, 48,

136 f., 193, 195, 209, 231, 276,

289, 315, 340
Fiske, 271

Flagellation, savage, 77 f
Fletcher A. C., 193
Fletcher, J. E., 109
Folk-tales, contrast in, 18 '••
Forces, central, in religion, Chs.

XXIII-XXV, 325 ff.
Formulae, uses of, 216 f.
Franciscans, 40
Frazer, vii, 51, 73, 77, 81, 112, 140,

258, 267, 268, 302
Friendship, importance of, in re-

ligion, 36, 331 f.
Freedom of will, doctrine of, 26 f. ;

and action, 161 ff.
Future life, 24, 30 ff., 44 f., 237.

Garbe, 28

Garcilasso de la Vega, 260, 271, 291

Garden of Eden, n

Genesis, 221, 315

Germans, ancient, religion of, 3, 9,

45, 137, 165, 166, 205, 225, 277
Guanas, 201 f.
Gillen, 133, 303
Gladstone, 151
Gloom, Ch. V, 89 ff.
God, as magician, 136 f. ; morality

of, 151 ; creative, 161, 315 f. ;

non-creative, 315 f. ; as sole

agent, 161 f. ; contradiction in
account of, 241 f. ; , Christian
conception of, 290, 310 f. ; de-
scribed •;, by affirmation and by
denial, 298 ; at hand and afar,
Ch. XXII, 300 ff. ; kindred to
man, 306 ; mediators between
man and, 311 ff. ; nature of,

357

Gods, emotion of, 106 ; laughter of,
124 ; unworshipped, 213 f., 260,
301 ; portrayal of, Chs. XVI-
XVIII, 220 ff. ; motives for be-
lief in many, Ch. XIX, 257 ff. ;
hierarchy of, 259 ff., 273 f. ; unity
of, 263 ff.; motives for decrease of,
Ch. XX, 273 ff. ; known and un-
known, Ch. XXI, 288 ff. ; defi-
nite and characterless, 288 ff. ;
dependent on sacrifice, 288, 307 f .;
indifferent, 300 ff.

Golden Age, u, 12 f.

Greek religion, 3, 8 f., 10 f., 16 f.j
45. 54. 9i, 167, 221, 232, 261,
264 f., 268, 290, 304, 313, 320

Haoma, no

Happiness, divine, contradictions

regarding, 234 f.
Heart in rite, 147
Hebrew religion ; v. Judaism
Hegel, 1 6
Hell, 48
Henneads, 274
Hermitage, 63 ff.
Herrera, 78
Herodotus, 18, 44, 72, 85, in, 113,

121, 138, 166, 167, 224, 268, 277,

288

Hinayanists, 171
Hindus, religion of the, i 10, 12, 18

24 f 28 f., 32 f., 34, 35) 4o, 42.

44 f., 51 f., 53 f., 65 f., 69, 70,

72, 74, 79 f., 85, 92 ff., 99 f,

106 ff., 138, 147, 159 f., I7o f.,

180 f., 183, 197 ff., 223 f., 253,

294 f., 305, 316, 319 f.
Holi festival, 58
Homer, vii, 16 f., 72, 91, 167,

232 ff., 261 ff., 265, 274
Hos, saturnalia of the, 99
Howison, viii

Human spirits, office of, 51 f.
Humour in religion, 122 ff., 124 f.
Hunger, effect of, 83

372

Index

Hypnosis in religious ' knowledge,'
199

Ideal, as past and as future, 13 f. ;
induces both gloom and cheer,
103 f. ; impassive, 108 ; as
changing and as changeless, 185 ;
vs. conduct, 240 ff. ; character-
less, 297 ; secular conflicts in re-
gard to, 317 f . ; impersonal,
337 f. ; malevolence in, 345 ;
goodwill in, 345 f. ; growth of,
344 ff. ; both near and remote,
346 f. ; unity and variety in,
350 f. ; as guide to truth, 360 ff.

Idealism, 178

Idealization, of past and future, 13
f. ; forerunners of, 250 f., 325 f. ;
act of, Chs. XXI an i XXII, 325
ff. ; various factors of influence
in, 327 ff.

Identification, religious, 275, 277 f.

Idolatry, 221

Iliad, 72, 232 ff., 261 ff., 265

Illumination, means and methods
of, 109 ff., 167 ff.

Imagery, vs. thought, Ch. XVII,
230 ff. ; immobility of, 240 ;
escape from, Ch. XVIII, 243 ff. ;
and thought reconciled, 245 ; of
the divine, Ch. XVI, 220 ff.

Imagination, in representation of
the divine, 221 ; check and loss

; of, 226 ff. ; religion's effect on,

,, 226 ff. ; imageless, 246 ; advan-
tages of, 254 f.

Imitation, 60 f., 143 f., 154 f., 186,
270

Imitations, offerings of, 268

Impersonation of dead, 224

Immortality, 24, 30, 44 ff., 237

Inaction, reverent, Ch. XI, 164
ff.

Indifference as ideal, 107 f.

India, religions of ; v. Bhagavad-
gita, Brahmin, Buddhism,
Hindus, Jains, Upanishads, Ve-
das.

Indians, American, religion of, 5 f.,
14, 31, 41, 64, 73, 77 f., 99, 109 ff.,
113, 120, 139, 156, 192, 193 f.,
257 f., 267, 275 f., 302, 313.

Infinite, worship of, 351 f.

Innovations, different attitudes to-
ward, 155 ff.

Inspiration, 108 ff., 196

Institutions, moral cost of, 57

Intellect, vs. feeling, 26 ; causes of
trust and jealousy of, Ch. XIV,
204 ff. ; partisans of, in the
church, 217 ; portrayal by means
of, 248 ff. ; revolt against, 250
ff. ; occidental vs. oriental atti-
tude toward, 253 f. ; advantages
of, 255 f.

Intercession, 311 ff.

Intoxicants, 109 ff., 120 f.

Intuition, religious value attached
to, 204 ff.

Inner life, 164, 168 ff., 175 f., 228
f., 246 ff.

Isaiah, 7, 44, 138, 221, 308

Islam ; v. Mohammedanism

Isolation, effect of, 63 f.

Jackson, 14, 263

Jains, 65, 305

James, v, viii, 208

Japanese, 29, 43, 54, 182, 202, 284,

Jastrow, 262, 271, 278

Jehovah, 263, 289 f.

Jeremiah, 64

Jesuit Relations, 14

Job, 6 f., 210, 292, 327

John, 36, 107

John the Baptist, 65

Johns, 166

Joshua, 123

Jowett, 349

Judaism, 6, 32, 35, 41, 43 f., 53 f.,

90, 138, 221 1, 263, 308
Judges, 55
Justice, and Hell, 15, 49

Kalevala, 9, 10, 18, 48, 136 f.,
193. !95. 209, 231, 289, 315,

34°

Khonds, 6, 10

King James Version, 156

Kingsley, 267, 301 f., 303 f.

Knowledge, place of, 126 f. ; in
Oriental religion, 198 ff. ; con-
tempt of critical, 206 ff . ; divine,
contradictions regarding, 231,
235 f. ; of God, affirmed and
denied, Ch. XXI, 288 ff.

Knox, 54

Koran, vii., 18, 27!., 35, 46, 48, 49.
55, 67, 124, 134, 147, 155, 160,

Index

373

165, 196, 216, 227, 289, 293,
308 f., 312

Korean belief, 258
Kosui Otani, 54
Krishna, 28, 35, 58, 294 f.

Language, effect of religion on, 156
Lao-tze, 16, 19, 172 f., 298, 306.

320

Latin, use of, 156
Layard, 208

Leaders, character of religious,. 155
Leaping, 113
Leger, 340
Le Jeune, 275
Leland, 5

Licentiousness, 97 ff., 113
Li Ki, 13, 64, 81, 123, 134, 144,

148, 157, 172, 224, 268, 313
Logic, 283. 36; f.
Long Hidden Friend, 135
Love, 42 f., 107
Lucian, 98
Lucretius, 210
Ludwig, 293

Macpherson, 6, 10, 12

Magic, 133 ff., 344

Mahayanists, 49, 171

Malay belief, 31, 63, 133, 192,267,

269

Man, homage to, 36
Marriage, of Good and Evil, 8 ;

and theism, 274, 281
Marutus, 230 f.

Masculine element in religion, 155
Maspero, 3, 270, 274, 315
Matthew, 65, 71
Mathews, 257, 260, 267
Maude, 157, 169
Maury, 120
Maximilian, 193
Mazda ; v. Zarathustrism
McGee, 260

Mechanism vs. will, 209 f.
Meditation, 311 ff.
' Medicine,' 64
Mexicans, ancient, religion of, 12,

63 f., 139, 263, 277, 291
Meiners, 114
Milton, 72, 238
Missions, 43 f.
Mohammedanism, vii f., 27, 31, 46,

53 f-> 55. IDO> J62, 196, 216, 227,

263, 308 f., 312, 340 f.

Mommsen, 09

Monier-Williams, 93, 100, 171

Monk of Evesham, 47, 197, 222

Molinos, 169

Monastic life, 40

Monogamy, and monotheism, 281

Monseur, 30

Monotheism, 54, 56, 262 ff., 271,

279 ff., 296 f., 357
Morality and religion, 4. 59 f., 149.

151, 152, 182, 232 ff., 363 ff.
Morgan, 5, in, 192, 276, 306
Morley, 151
Movement, muscular, stimulation

by, 113 f-
Miiller, 293
Murray, 237, 23"
Musters, 302
Mystic temper, 47, 168 ff., 174 ff.,

i?9, J97. 243 ff- 252 f., 3J5 f-
Myth, and ritual, 143 f. ; variety of
interests in, 191 ff.

Names, influence of, on pantheon,

269, 270, 277 f.
Nature, unity of, 280 f.
Nazarites, 64 f.
Negativism, moral, 79 f.
New, 100.
Nirvana, 24
Numbers, 65.

Odyssey, 232, 274

Oldenberg, 138

Oldfield, 100

Om, 199

Oman, 58, 100

Oracles, 166

Ordeal, 166

Order, impulse toward, 259 ff.,

279
Originality in religious action,

154 f-
Oriental temper, 27, 202

Oviedo, in

Pachacamac, 260, 271, 291

Pantheism, 285, 294 f.

Palmer, 28, 139, 156, 213, 261,

263, 341

Paradise, Mohammedan, 46
Paradise Lost, 72, 238
Passivity, religious, 164 ff. ; inner

sources of, Ch. XII, 174 ff. ;

value of, 355

374

Index

Past, contemned and glorified, n,

13- 303 f-

Patriotism and religious feeling,
119

Paul, 36, 43 f., 85, 222, 225, 290

Pausanias, 290, 304

Peloria, 98

Pepys, 135

Persecution, 54 ft.

Persians, religion of ; v. Zarathus-
trism

Personal crises, ritual of, 146

Perunu, 340

Peter, n

Philosophers, temper of, 177

Philosophic oppositions, and re-
ligious, 1 6

Physical representation, 220 f.,
254

Picture vs. thought, Ch. XVII,
230 ff.

Piedrahita, 6

Pinkerton, in

Pity vs. love, 42 f., 106

Plato, 16, 85, 241

Plotinus, 294

Political influence on re!k;ion, 270

&., 319 ff-
Polytheism, 56, 257 ff., 285 f.,

296 f., 357
Porphyry, 85 f.
Portrayal of divinity, Chs. XVI-

XVIII, 220 ff.
' Possession,' spiritual, by eating,

112

Prayer of Assur-bani-pal, 314

Predestination, 25 f., 29

Priests, clean and unclean, 72

Primitivism, 155 f., 157

' Primitive ' peoples, religion of,
vii, 5 ff., 12, 30 f., 41, 51, 63 1,
67. 73. 77 ff-, 81, 100 ff., 109 ff.,
113 f., 120, 123, 133 f., 139 f.,
156, 158, 191 ff., 257 ff., 263,
266 ff., 271, 275 f., 277, 291 ff.,
300 ff., 306 f., 312 f., 315, 319,
325 ff., 344

Prohibitions, moral, 79

Protestantism, 50, 225

Proyart, 301

Psalms, 52, 106, 308

Punishment, future, 14 f., 48 ff.

Purim, 102

Puritans, 71 f., 96, 196

Purposive type, 175

Quens, de, 99
Quietists, 168 ff.

Ralston, 276

Rawlinson, 9, 13 f.

Reality,, sense of, 178 f.

Rebirths, endless, 159 f.

Rechabites, 64

Reclus, 67

Reincarnation, 159 f.

Religion, vs. morality, 151 ; de-
fined, 343, 352 ; distinctive
/marks of, 344 f. ; standards of,

"" Ch. XXV, 353 ff.

Renunciation, spirit of, 63 ff. ;
motives of, Ch. IV, 75 ff. ; secu-
lar, 75 ff. ; and passivity, 174

Requisitive portrayal, 253, 255 f.

Revelation, various modes of,
165 ff. ; to Monk of Evesham,
47, 197, 222

Revelation, u, 46 f., 225

Reverence, effect of, on belief,
281 ff. ; objectless, 350

Reville, 64, 139, 277

Revivals, 115 f.

Ritual, influence of 117 f. ; freed,
from magic, 137 f. ; returns to
magic, 138 f. ; variety of mean-
ing behind, 139 f. ; motives in,
140 ff. ; secular, 141 ; demand
for sincerity in, 147 f. ; coolness
toward, Ch. IX, 147 ff. ; as a
rival of morality, 149 ; moral
character of, 152 ; hampers free-
dom, 152 f. ; effect of, on pan-
theon, 268 f. ; change of mean-
ing in, 339 ff.

Rivero, no

Robinson, viii

Roman religion, 54, 89

Romans, 37, 85, 139

Roscher, 99

Roth, 267 "

Russians, religion of, 157, 169, 276,

34°

Sacaea, 98

Sacred Books of the East, vi

Sacrifice in asceticism, 87

Samkhya school, 28

Samuel, 137

Saoshyant, 12, 51

Saturnalia, 97 ff.

Saussaye, de la, 9, 54, 65, 67, 73,

Index

375

74, 106, 138, 139, 166, 171, 172,

199, 274, 277, 278, 306
Sayce, g, 86, 138, 267, 268, 269,

270, 274, 277, 278, 293, 308, 315
Schirren, 306

Schoolcraft, 5, 31, 64, 267, 302
Science and religion, 206 ff., 210 ff.
Scientific impulse, 360 ff.
Scientific temper, contrasts in, 177
Scripture, inconsistency of, 17
Seasons, excitement with, 97 ff.
Sects, size of, 52 ; difference of

sympathy in, 53
Secret societies, 41
Selden, 156
Self, appreciated and contemned,

Ch. I, 23 ff., 354 ; over- valuation

of, 1 80 f.

Self-denial, 63 f., 67
Seneca, 98
Senoussi, 67

Senses, distrust of, 83 ff. ; con-
fusion from, 182 f. ; in religious

portraiture, 220 ff.
Sheol, 32, 44

Signs of divine will, 165 ff.
Siva, 72 f.

Skeat, 31, 63, 133, 192, 267, 269
Smith, G., 306
Smith, E. A., 99
Smith, R., 263

Society and religion, 58 ff., 150 f.
Socrates, 16

Solitude, effect of, 83, 115
Soul, 30, 267
Species deities, 275 f.
Spells, 134 ff.
Spencer, 133, 303
Spener, 168 f.

' Stages of deliverance,' 200 f.
Standards of religion, Ch. XXV,

353 ff-

Steindorff, 9

Stevenson, M. C., 258, 260, 315
Stevenson, R. L., 61 f., 176
Stigmata, 307
Stoicism, i8of.
Strabo, 72, 98, 99, 109, 139
Strong, 314
Suffering, Buddhist account of,

93 ff-

Sumner, 113

Swedenborg, 47, 197, 244
Symbolism, 143, 243 ff., 256
Sympathy, Ch. II, 39 ff., 80, 354

Tacitus, 121, 137, 165, 166, 205,

208, 225, 277

Tao Teh King, 19, 172 f., 298, 306
Tattooing, 307
Taylor, 259, 271
Tennyson, 210
Tetzcatlipoca, 12
Timothy, 71
Thought, conflicts in regard to,

Chs. XIII-XXII, 191 ff. ; value

of, for religion, 356 f.
Thoreau, 62
Tobacco, in
Toleration, 53 f.
Transmigration, 32
Triads, 274
Trinity, 357
Truth, double duty toward, 217 f. ;

forms of representing, 245 ff. ;

in religion, 358 ff. ; various

avenues to, 360 ff.
Tschudi, no
Tuoni, 48
Turner, 258, 260
Tylor, vii, 51, 63, 112, 120, 275, 302

Uchimura, 29, 43, 182, 202, 284, 341
Upanishads, 18, 29, 170, 198, 199,

253, 295

Ukko, 16, 231, 289
Unconsciousness, desire for, 24, 32
Unity, divine, 54, 56, 262 ff., 271,

279 ff., 296 f., 298 f., 357
Unknown gods, 290 ff.

Valhalla, 45

Vallabda, 74

Vana-prasthas, 65

Vedas, 7, 17, 69 f., 91, 106, 135,
138, 194, 209, 223, 231, 232, 264,
269, 275, 293, 307, 313 f.

Vergil, 1 08

Verigin, 169

Vigils, 83

Vishnu, form of, 223

Vishnuism ; v. Bhagavadgita

Waitz, 194, 303

Whitman, 29

Whitney, 157

Will, freedom and necessitation of,

161 ff. ; as a fetter, 175 ; vs.

mechanism, 210
Wilson, D., in
Wilson, H. H-, loo, 147, 293,

376

Index

Wilson, J. L., 6, 41, 166, 301,

306

Wissova, 54
Woman, vs. man, in religion, 155 ;

prophetic office of, 205
Worcester, viii
Word, incarnate, 194
World accepted and renounced,

Ch. Ill, 63 ft., 354 f.
Worship vs. belief, 213 f.

Yl King, 134

Yima, 12

Zarathustrans, 263, 320 ; v. Zend-
Avesta.

Zend-Avesta, vii, 7 f., 9, 11, 12, 13,
14, 24, 32, 35, 51, 52, 68 f., 92,
no, 114, 134, 148, 194, 204, 216,
224, 262, 269, 288, 289, 307, 308,

315

Zimmern, 293, 308
Zoroastrians, 263, 320 ; v. Zend-
Avesta

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